


Beast

by ladyshadowdrake



Series: Atypical Fairytale [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Curse gone wrong, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Humor, M/M, Magic, Multi, Novel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 12:18:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 63,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3692007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kingdom is in uproar searching for the missing Prince Thor and his team. Heading the search, Captain Steve Rogers is more invested in finding his best friend, but when he stumbles onto an abandoned castle in a snowy meadow, he finds a lot more than he bargained for.</p><p>For the Steve/Bucky Spring Fling gift exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkyisGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyisGray/gifts).



> First, I want to apologize for taking so long to complete this. Sorry for making you wait for it so long, I hope it’s worth the three week delay!
> 
> This is a pinch hit for the Steve/Bucky Spring Fling Gift Exchange, prompt: Beauty and the Beast AU.
> 
> Thank you to Synteis for being so amazingly patiently and accessible for this – she put in almost as much energy as I did and didn’t let me get away with being lazy! And to Fjuri for being her usual supportive, soundingboard self
> 
> I did complete this, start to finish, in 3 weeks, so please forgive me if it feels at all rushed!

The stone was ice against his flesh, leaching away the heat of pain and fever. He stirred slowly, sucking in a sharp breath as fire bloomed along his ribs and tore through his back. The sound he made was more the whine of a wounded animal than anything a man should make. He collapsed back to the floor, mind running in circles of _painpainfirepainFIREpain_. The air was moist with rain and electric on his tongue. His mouth tasted like copper and mud, his eyes couldn’t focus and the entire world was screaming, flashing fire, blackness. Nothing.

When he woke again, light filtered in through gaping holes in a stone wall. With a great effort of will and an explosion of agony, he rolled onto his back, screaming into the empty ruins. His left arm fell to the floor with a sharp clang, and he turned to see that where he expected pale flesh, he saw red infection lines and silver reflecting the light. He moved his fingers and the silver moved. His breath labored in his chest, and he stared wide-eyed at the silver fingers moving when he moved his fingers, silver skin rippling like liquid over metal muscles.

“ _No_ ,” he croaked, but it came out a wheeze. He tried to stand, bending his right knee to push himself up, and more silver, pouring down his leg to a silver foot with silver toes that moved like real toes did. “ ** _NO_** _!”_ he tried again, louder, but not stronger, his voice cracking and skittering around the walls.

He went lightheaded with his breath, shadows closing in over his eyes, and then blackness. Nothing.

Repeat: Wake, move, scream, _burn_ , nothing. Nothing.

~*~

He might have been dead, or dreaming, or dreaming _and_ dead. A samovar stood just to his left, scolding a candleholder. Behind them, a round pewter clock stood and glared. He closed his eyes, but he could still hear the teapot’s strong feminine voice, the candelabra’s frustrated whine, could _feel_ the clock glaring. He asked himself how a clock could glare, and, despite the pain in his ribs, started to laugh. The samovar and candelabra’s bickering stopped while he gasped for air and clutched his side with his right hand. He heard little metal feet clicking on the stone, and a cool, curved handle touched his forehead.

“Well, at least he’s still alive,” the samovar muttered. “No thanks to you,” she added. She had a young woman’s voice, smoky and attractive for all that it also echoed like it was coming from the bottom of her pot.

“It wasn’t _my fault,_ ” the candelabra complained.

“It is your fault, Barton,” the clock said mildly, but there was a hint of threat underneath.

He started to laugh again. These little inanimate _things_ had voices, and their voices sounded smoky, and bright, and dangerous. Only after the laughter turned to sobs did he think to wonder if there was any reason that these inanimate things shouldn’t sound smoky, or bright, or dangerous. He didn’t think they should, but he also couldn’t explain to himself why they _shouldn_ _’t_. He realized abruptly that he couldn’t think of a reason for _anything_ – he didn’t think he should be waking up in a shattered stone room, but he didn’t remember where he _should_ be sleeping. He couldn’t remember if he had parents, or siblings, or a lover, or why he knew down to his bones that all the silver covering his body was _wrongwrongwrong_. He didn’t know if he had a favorite color, or if he had any friends and who they were – where they were.

He didn’t know his own name, or why he even thought he should have a name at all.

“Where am I?” he asked shakily, looking up at the samovar.

She made a huffing noise and shuffled closer to his face. “Open your mouth.”

“Why in hel—bwafths—” He choked on the trickle of warm water and she backed away, giving him the distinct impression that she would be rolling her eyes if she had any. She waited for him to get his lungs back under control and marched back in, turning the spigot on her belly with one elegantly curled handle. The entire concept was mad, but his throat burned with thirst, so he caught the stream between his lips and swallowed carefully. The water was fresh and tasted vaguely sweet, just warm enough to make it easy to swallow. He held up a clumsy hand when he couldn’t take anymore and she turned the spigot off and backed away again.

“Am I asleep, or in hell?”

“You’re charming, is what you are,” the candelabra told him cheerfully. “There are worse faces to wake up to than ours.”

“You don’t have faces,” he pointed out, and then belated raised his hands to feel for his own features. They were all intact, the dimensions of his face and texture of his skin muffled against the metal fingers of his left hand. He held the shiny silver hand up and examined it carefully, moving his fingers, curling his wrist. Everything moved fine, but none of it looked like it should. He let the heavy arm fall back to his side, wincing at the loud clatter of metal on stone.

“What’s happened to me?” When there was no answer, he turned to his strange companions, horrified at the thought that they might be inanimate objects after all and he'd dreamt waking up to them arguing. The three items stared at him, projecting various levels of uncertainty. Finally, the clock waddled forward on its tiny pewter feet.

“What do you remember?”

He shook his head, but stopped immediately at the shock of pain that followed. He swallowed hard and opened his eyes to look at the clock. “Nothing. Nothing. Do you know me? My name?” he asked, starting to shake all over. The _name_ , it was important – what was he without one?

The clock said nothing, and the other two tilted marginally as though exchanging glances. None of them answered.

“Do I have a name?” he pressed anxiously.

“Sure,” the candelabra said, “We just don’t… remember?”

“We can’t say,” the teapot correct. “We’ve all been cursed.”

“Why? Who?” he demanded, anger rising sluggishly through the pain, confusion, and fog. He tried to move his legs again and it felt more like his spine was being taken apart with a pair of crowbars. He hissed and let his knees fall back to the floor, realizing for the first time that he was naked. When there was no answer, he tried, “Do you remember your names?”

“Clint,” the candelabra said immediately, “I’m Clint. Miss Teapot is Natasha, and the pouty timepiece is Phil, but you better call him Coulson until he’s saved your life at least once.”

He took that all in, eyebrows pulling together. The names didn’t sound familiar, but nothing sounded familiar. He eyed them, searching for any spark of recognition, an understanding of what these creatures could be other than the fever dreams of the dead or dying. “You were human?” he asked slowly. Human seemed right.

“We think so,” Coulson said after a beat, “But we can’t be sure.”

“Why are you all…” he gestured to them with a flick of his metal fingers, “And I’m still…” Still what? Not _human_ , covered in silver that moved like flesh. “Maybe I’m just _not yet_ …” he finished to himself. Was this the curse? To slowly turn to metal and then into crockery? What would he be when the transformation completed?

The candelabra hopped over and patted him. “There’s got to be a way to reverse it. We’ll figure it out.”

~*~

While the room he'd woken in was giving way to the elements, the rest of what turned out to be a castle was in good repair, if dusty and cold. He clutched a blanket at his throat and leaned heavily on a wall as he slid down the hallway. Shivers ran over him in fit and waves, and he stopped at one corner to rest his forehead against the cold stones.

“How much further?” he asked, breathing hard, sparks running down his sides with each inhale. His knees, hips, and ankles throbbed in hot protest to each step, and he thought his head might just fall off his shoulders. He focused on his body as if that might keep it together, to stop himself from going insane with panic over where he was, who he was, _why_ he existed at all if he wasn’t anyone, didn’t belong anywhere.

“Not much further, sir,” the clock said, impossibly bent backwards to look up at him. “Just around the next corner.”

He looked up and suppressed a groan. It probably wasn’t very far at all, but the hall seemed to stretch into infinite darkness. He pushed himself upright again and slid forward another few feet. Natasha marched in front of them, somehow managing to look graceful, and Clint stayed at his feet, candles lit to provide a modest ring of light. A shadow caught his eyes halfway down the hall and he jumped, not comforted when he realized it was his own reflection. Making a strangled noise, he leaned down and scooped Clint up. Clint echoed the startled shriek of his stomach muscles, squirming in his hand, the light of his candles flickering madly on the walls.

“That _tickles_ , what are you—?” Clint cut himself off abruptly and went still.

A low growl started somewhere in his chest as the light bathed his face in the reflection, and he saw his own eyes. They were electric green, glowing in the darkness, hungry predator’s eyes. His lip pulled back to show teeth, blinding white in the dim glow, his skin gray in the dim light and being devoured by irregular patches of gleaming silver. The metal danced in the candlelight as though laughing. He cocked his hand back to throw the candelabra at the mirror, to shatter those terrible eyes boring holes into him, but the clock stomped firmly on his flesh foot.

“Please do not throw the archer.”

It was so ludicrous that he stopped, momentarily forgetting the animal terror of meeting his own gaze. “Archer?” he asked, turning away from his troubling green gaze to look at the candleholder.

Clint shrugged, but he seemed nervous. A fine shudder passed down his smooth silver body. “Seems like it fits.”

He swallowed hard and slumped against the wall to set Clint back to the dusty carpet. “You’re an archer, candelabra, cursed human,” he muttered, closing his eyes firmly against the sight of himself in the dark mirror. “I’m a monster. A beast.”

The others said nothing to contradict him, maybe unable to, maybe because they agreed. The beast didn’t know, and he didn’t suppose that he cared. He turned his face to the wall and concentrated on breathing, on making that rumbling growl in his chest stop.

Natasha’s clawed feet thumped purposefully on the carpet. “Are you going to sit down and die?” she demanded, her voice sharp.

The beast considered it. He sucked in a painful breath and let it go. “No, I guess not.”

“Then get up and start moving.”

He nodded, kept his eyes away from the mirror, and followed her down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For teasers, updates, etc., come visit me on tumblr: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/


	2. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

Bucky sat at the bar, drawing meaningless symbols on the sticky countertop. A dented flagon of dark ale sat at his elbow, untouched, unlike the three before it. He glanced at it sideways with a glare; Steve couldn’t get drunk anymore – not that he drank much before the procedure that changed him from a pintsized spitfire to a better-than-two-hundred pound block of muscle and creepily straight teeth. A better-than-two-hundred pound block of muscle who didn’t need Bucky protecting him anymore. It was a stupid, mean-spirited thought, selfish, and toxic, but he couldn’t help it. He’d defined so much of his life as Steve Rogers’ best friend, always assured a place at his side because Steve _needed_ him.

He’d never realized exactly how much he needed Steve until that place wasn’t assured any longer, Steve surrounded by alchemists, scientists, soldiers, leaders. Steve shook hands with the king and Bucky stood against the wall and watched. Maybe he was jealous, and bitter, but the horrible thing clawing up out of his stomach curled around his shoulders and whispered, _afraid_. He swiped the mug off the bar and drained half of it in one pull. It was good ale and it deserved better treatment, but he couldn’t bring himself to order the cheap shit when he was mourning his best friend.

The pub wasn’t their favorite place to go, him and Steve together. In fact, Bucky wasn’t sure Steve had ever set foot in The Flying Boar. Their place was down at the docks, The Nine Fishes, their fathers’ and grandfathers’ haunt. Steve would nurse a single drink all night and keep an eye on Bucky, who inevitably drank too much. Most nights some drunk sailor would get too personal with a barmaid, Steve would step in, all five-and-a-half feet of him, and Bucky would find the two of them back behind the pub a few minutes later. Sometimes Steve would be sitting on the other guy’s chest, throwing punches, but most of the time, Steve was picking himself up out of the mud. Even drunk, even before he was recruited for the guard, Bucky was a better fighter than most seasoned soldiers. He had to be, always yanking guys off his best friend and making sure they knew not to start up again.

Bucky couldn’t see it ever happening again. Thrilled for his friend in the beginning, it didn’t take long to realize that Steve’s new body wasn’t going to need to protection, and where did that really leave Bucky? His best friend was captain of the prince’s guard, and, as he’d displayed full well that morning in the practice yard, more than capable of taking care of himself. Steve had stood in the middle of the dirt yard, and called the guard forward one at time, going to head-to-head with the best of them and landing them all in the mud. Even Prince Thor himself had a match in Captain Steve Rogers. Bucky watched from the sidelines, seeing everything he’d ever tried to teach his friend come out in full force. Steve moved like a dancer, threw punches like a boxer, and despite the sinking in his stomach, Bucky was proud to see him finally holding his own in a fight.

The door opened, letting in a gust of cool evening air and a burst of noise. Bucky glanced over, and then hunched further into his stool as Prince Thor strode into the room, grinning ear-to-ear. His posse trailed behind them – though Bucky would never call them that to their faces for fear of losing a limb, every one of them Important and two of them actual nobility. Bucky’s eyes flitted over them quickly, checking each one off against a mental roster and looking for one particular face. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner together meant potential trouble at the best of times – either of them drunk was guaranteed mayhem. Behind them, Clint Barton towed a very unwilling Phil Coulson, who had his eyes closed in obvious irritation, a vein flickering at his temple. Natasha Romanov sauntered in at the back of the group, eyes darting around the room, daring a soul to suggest it was a rough place not meant for ladies who weren’t willing to open their blouses. Her eyes met Bucky’s briefly, but she didn’t even twitch in recognition. Bucky didn’t think for a second that she didn’t notice him, he just saluted her briefly with his pewter flagon in a silent _thank you_ for keeping her mouth shut.

The door closed behind Natasha. Bucky waited for a moment longer to make sure Steve wasn’t going to make an appearance before slumping back over the bar top, surprisingly disappointed. He told himself when he stepped into The Flying Boar that it was to escape Steve, but then why choose one of Prince Thor’s favorite pubs, if not in hope of seeing his friend? He _wanted_ Steve to find him, to sit next to him at the bar and say, _What_ _’re you doing here, Buck?_ The Twin Siren _is in port, and there_ _’ll be music at the Fishes. Let_ _’s go._ Gods below, he was pathetic. Bucky buried his nose in his flagon and took a healthy drink that settled uncomfortably on his already-full stomach.

The newcomers garnered a ruckus – even if it was one of Prince Thor’s regular hangouts, familiarity did not breed apathy with that lot, and the barmaid was quick to hustle over to him, shouting to be heard over the loud greetings of the other patrons. Thor’s new unit was dubbed _The Avengers_ , a response unit the king granted his son in a thinly veiled effort to keep him from stirring up trouble. It wouldn’t work for long, but Thor’s excitement with breaking in the new unit would keep him on task for a while. Maybe it would last them all the way through the next spring without the guard sent chasing after the prince as he rode out to right some imagined slight, but Bucky doubted it. After a winter spent cooped up in the castle, Thor would be ready to start trouble again with the first spring melt. Instead of having just his childhood companions – known with some affection as The Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, as if they were a traveling circus – Thor would also have one of the most specialized fighting units ever formed at his beck and call. Bucky privately thought the king was mad to put _The Avengers_ together, but no one had asked him.

The door opened again and Bucky glanced up, but looked away immediately. The latest arrival was muffled in a dark cloak, but Bucky could tell from a glance that it wasn’t Steve. Even in his new body, tall and broad, Bucky could pick Steve out of a crowd from a mile off. The cloaked man considered the prince’s loud gathering for a moment before he turned for the bar. With only three stools pressed against the ancient slab, it was inevitable that Bucky would get a neighbor. He considered moving to the far stool to put space between them, but it seemed like too much effort.

“Sulking?” the man asked, ordering with a single finger. The bartender pulled down a crystal goblet, polished it, and filled it with golden mead. “Why aren’t you over there with the rest of the rabble, Barnes?”

Too tipsy to really care that he’d been taken by surprise, Bucky peered over at the man. The stranger turned just enough for Bucky to see his face – pale, sharp lines, burning green eyes. Bucky’s body struggled to stand while his mind was still catching up, but Prince Loki gave him a dismissive sneer, and Bucky settled again.

It took him a second to muster enough brainpower to ask, “Do you want me to move?”

“No. Stay, and don’t draw attention to me.” His eyes flickered over Bucky, narrowing as though not sure Bucky was someone he could trust, or even that he was human. He must have decided that Bucky was at least a marginally intelligent creature, because he accepted his glass of mead and took an exploratory sip without making any threats. Being recruited into the guard was the best thing that could have happened to Bucky, but he’d happily escaped being put under the command of either Prince. Then Steve had volunteered for a dangerous-bordering-on-suicidal procedure that had landed him as Prince Thor’s unit captain, dragging Bucky right along on his wake. It was Bucky’s opinion that no attention from a royal was good attention, and even through the press of alcohol, he was dismayed to realize that he’d earned enough of Loki’s attention that the man knew him on sight.

“Why are you sulking when all of your bosom buddies are celebrating?” Loki’s voice twisted nastily over the words, his eyes narrowing with some dark thought.

Bucky should have bitten through his tongue to keep from answering, but instead his lips unsealed and he started _babbling_ the whole stupid thing – Steve looking so small and fragile on Erskine’s table, screaming his throat to ribbons while Howard Stark worked his strange magic, and then walking through the fire as a man who was too strong and too perfect to need Bucky standing next to him.

“The Steve Rogers who captains my idiot brother’s ‘avenging unit,’ you mean?” Loki clarified, his lip again peeled up into a sneer. Bucky wanted to punch that sneer right off his face, but he grabbed his pantleg in one fist to stop the motion. He nodded instead, eyes flickering over to where his weapons belt hung from a hook by the door. It was probably a good thing the knives were well out of reach.

“You’re whining that your friend doesn’t need you to protect him from back-alley bullies anymore? My gods, the cares of the simple minded,” Loki muttered into his goblet, as if it didn’t occur to him that Bucky might be intelligent enough to understand him.

It was a lucky thing that Bucky’s vision went white, because – prince or not – Bucky would have smashed Loki’s perfect teeth right through the back of his head if he could have seen properly. Loki obviously sensed his sudden rage, because he reached over and grabbed Bucky by the back of the neck, using the grip to slam him into the bar. “I don’t suggest you stray out of your place, mutt,” Loki spat into the sudden silence. It was a small space, and Bucky’s flagon hitting the floor called the attention of every eye in the room.

“Brother!” Thor crossed the floor in five thunderous strides and slung an arm around Loki’s shoulders. “What brings you out on a fine night such as this? Are there not stars or migrating birds for you to study?”

For all of his many faults, Thor _did_ love his brother, and he probably meant it as an innocent-enough question. He was just not terribly bright. Loki shrugged him off without letting Bucky up. “I’ve come, _brother_ , to discuss the matter of certain rumors once again circulating the court.”

“About your fair filly?” Clint called from the table with a laugh. The man never did have a filter between his head and his tongue – he was almost worse than Steve like that.

Bucky winced, and Loki’s hand tightened on the back of his neck, nails digging into his skin like claws. Bucky could feel the faint tremor of Loki’s rage, and just wished that Clint had waited until he wasn’t being scruffed like a naughty pup before inviting the wrath of the famously wrathful prince. After a tense moment, Loki went still as the eye of a storm. He uncurled his hand to let Bucky up, wearing a gruesome grin.

“It seems you all have a lesson to learn in manners,” Loki drawled. His voice ran down Bucky’s spine like silk ribbons with razor edges. He shuddered. “And lessons are so hard to craft,” he continued, eyes turning to Bucky, “We might as well deliver two lessons as one, don’t you think?”

He reached into his vest and pulled out a clay tile. Before anyone could react, he slammed the tile to the floor. Every light in the barroom extinguished with a hiss, plunging them into darkness.

The fire came later.

~*~

Daylight made it easier to hide the gnawing poison in Steve’s belly. In daylight, he had a purpose, men to command, the day’s search to plan, the careful rotation of men and resources to make sure the city was still protected and patrolled while every effort was put into the search for the missing prince and his unit. It was at night, alone in his small room, that the poison crawled out of his stomach and whispered, _they must be dead by now, Bucky_ _’s dead, you_ _’ve failed. He defended you his entire life, and you_ _’ve failed him. Failure, Rogers, you_ _’re a failure._

Steve pressed his hands over his eyes and struggled to breathe around that crushing fear. Erskine’s potion and Howard’s ritual ( _procedure_ , he called it as if it weren’t magic) meant that he didn’t need more than three hours of sleep a night. It left him with a lot of time to plan, and even more time to think himself in toxic circles. Pepper caught him at it some mornings, not evening bothering to knock anymore, knowing that Steve would be awake for hours before even the kitchen staff. Steve tried to be alert, dressed, mask of hopeful determination firmly in place before she arrived with tea and breakfast, but some mornings it was all he could do just to be upright.

“You’re going to run yourself into the ground if you keep this up,” Pepper told him, setting a tray on his desk. She wasn’t attached to the barracks in any way, but she insisted on bring him his breakfast every morning so she could check on the status of the search. She’d never said a word about it one way or another, just showed up three days after Thor and The Avengers went missing, and pretended she hadn’t heard him when he told her that he was fine eating in the mess.

Steve mustered a smile and straightened his shoulders. “We’re all worried, and getting desperate. The prince has been missing too long, and the snows will be too thick to search soon.”

Giving him a sweet, sad smile and said, “Don’t try to lie to me. You can lie to the king and queen, but there’s no reason to lie to me. It’s not Thor you’re tearing yourself to shreds over.”

Steve shuddered and put his chin to his chest. He swore an oath to the prince, fell to his knees and kissed Thor’s ring, promised his life in service to the prince and the realm, but all he could think about was Bucky maybe lost in the mountains, injured, or being held captive by any number of creatures or villains. And Steve, for all his floundering the snow and ordering men around, couldn’t find him.

“The result is the same,” Steve said quietly.

Pepper stood next to him, breath flushing out in a heavy sigh. She set a hesitant hand on Steve’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll keep looking.”

“The search will be called for winter soon.”

“Then _we_ _’ll_ keep looking. You have friends, Steve, and we all want them back. I want Tony back, but whatever happens, it’s not your fault.”

Steve nodded, not in agreement, just in acknowledgement. The truth was that _The Twin Siren_ was in port that night, and Steve should have been at The Nine Fishes with Bucky, listening to the music. Instead, he’d been at the castle, running night drills to test his vision. If he’d been with them, maybe…

 _Maybe I would be missing too_ , Steve told himself firmly. If there was a threat that Prince Thor and the bulk of The Avengers couldn’t battle, Steve wouldn’t have been able to do a thing to stop it. He sat up straight, set his jaw, and reached for his breakfast. They had a long day of searching ahead, and Steve needed to be at his best if they had any hope of finding their missing men. With winter settling thick across the land, the search for the missing prince and his party grew more desperate by the day. He was sending out groups as small as two to hunt the woods, frantically covering their search grids and coming back disappointed every evening. It was horrible and selfish of him to think it, but he was glad Thor disappeared with Bucky, because Steve wouldn’t have been able to raise such a response for a lone sergeant. 

_I_ _’m going to be the one to save you this time, Bucky._

“So what are your plans for today? Did you think about the search grid I proposed?” Pepper asked, standing in front of Steve’s large map table with her hands on her hips.

Steve picked up his porridge and crossed the room to stand next to her, pointing out the new lines drawn in carefully in soft pencil. She picked up his drafting pencil and started making notes, circling areas that might have caves or other shelter. Steve was happy to have her help – he knew few people that could organize and manage other people better than Virginia Potts. There were already rumors flying around the palace about her moving in and out of his quarters in the morning, but he didn’t mind them if she didn’t, and planning around breakfast meant not having to watch the rest of the military leaders ignore her during strategy meetings.

~*~

“Sam, where the _heck_ are you?” Steve sliced down with his short sword, clearing away a swath of thick winter vegetation from the path. He could see all the signs of Sam’s passage, but hadn’t found the man himself yet, and Steve was starting to worry. He cast an uncertain glance at the sky. It was the color of brushed steel, thick with clouds, promising another heavy snowfall. No one had dared to say it in public yet, but after the first good blizzard, they were going to have to call in the search. In the spring, they would go looking for the prince’s corpse. Steve sent up a silent prayer to hold the snows back another day, another week, just until he found Bucky. Barring that, he prayed that the team was holed up in one of the abandoned castles that dotted the countryside, stocked up with game for the winter, just waiting out the snows. It wouldn’t be the first time Thor dragged his companions off on a hunt without telling anyone and conveniently lost track of the time.

 _Phil and Natasha were with them_ , Steve’s traitorous inner voice reminded him. Natasha was an expert negotiator and the queen often sent her in to talk reason into one prince or the other, and no one could wrangle a stubborn royal like Phil Coulson. Steve shook the thought away, sternly telling himself not to catastrophize. Until they found some evidence one way or the other, he needed to believe that Bucky was still alive and well, looking after his teammates the way he’d always looked after Steve.

His horse stopped as they came to a hill and tossed her head. She huffed out a breath and sidestepped nervously, flanks heaving, white clouds of vapor forming around her mouth. Steve leaned forward in the saddle and patted her neck. Hope wasn’t trained as a warhorse, and as a result she was more sensitive to danger than some of the other horses. He slid out of the saddle and dropped into ankle-deep snow, drawing his shield off his back. Grabbing her by the bridle, he led her forward, doing his best to test the ground before committing his weight to it. They crested the small hill and the wind shifted, blowing right into their faces. Hope whinnied in alarm, stamping her feet and yanking back on the reins. She planted her back feet and refused to move further, tossing her head, eyes wide. Steve pulled her head down to calm her, and then wrapped the reins loosely around a low branch so she could still run if needed.

Moving sideways down the hill, Steve kept his eyes open and his breath still and even. He couldn’t hear anything more than the normal sounds of the forest settling in for winter – the whisper of snow dropping from pine boughs, the wind in the trees, a lone bird of prey crying out far above. He was so focused on listening that he almost tripped over the corpse. Steve scrambled backward, heart pounding in surprise. Half buried in a dusting of powder, all but concealed from above by a snow drift piling up against his back, Sam’s stallion stared blankly up at the sky. Steve fell to his knees and dug grimly in the snow, stomach twisting as he searched for Red’s rider. The horse was alone, all the heat gone from his body, one foreleg broken badly just below the knee, a hole torn straight through his throat. Steve found the culprit a moment later – a jagged branch, stained in the horse’s blood. Just below the top layer of powder and ice, the snow was a red slush. Steve stayed on his knees for several minutes, breathing in the relief of not finding Sam buried under the stallion’s body, and saddened at the horse’s fate. The animal was stripped of tack and gear, so Sam must have been able to walk on his own.

Steve heard shifting behind him, and twisted to look over his shoulder. He saw a flash of yellow eyes before a gray wolf darted back to cover. A horse would be a lifesaving find for a wolf pack, and despite the foolish desire to bury the animal, Steve wasn’t going to deny the wolves a meal for the sake of sentimentality. Steve set his hand briefly over Red’s eye and then rose and backed away from the carcass. He had no fear that the wolves would attack him under normal circumstances, but to defend a meal? He looked up the hill to see Hope, a vague shadow against the sky, just barely visible at the top of the rise. Steve moved away at a sedate pace, trying to broadcast peaceful intentions as he returned to her.

He found her skittish but unharmed and led her in a wide arc around the dead horse, keeping one eye on the sky. The last thing he needed was his lieutenant to go missing in the middle of the search for the prince.

~*~

They picked up Sam’s trail on the other side of a sluggish stream and followed it through a short stretch of forest, the ground kept mostly clear of snow by the ancient trees. They cleared the trees to a shallow valley draped in perfect white except where Sam cut through to the surprisingly intact castle in the center. Steve took a moment to rest on a fallen pine, leaving Hope to nose through the sparse underbrush while they both caught their breath. There were hundreds of small castles left abandoned around the countryside and in the mountains, strongholds of chieftains before King Odin and his Aesir forcibly unified the country. Many were ruined or depopulated by war and disease, while others were just left standing in fields when Asgard was constructed on more fertile, inviting land. This squat block of dark stone must have been one of the latter, looking pristine but for a crumbled wall on the second story.

Steve watched the castle while he drank from his leather flask, a bad feeling settling in his stomach. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was about the castle that made him nervous, but some quality in the air, the lack of sound and movement, the stark, aching, animal sense of a place of habitation left abandoned made the hair on his arms stand up and the back of his neck tingle. Pushing the discomfort aside, Steve grabbed Hope’s reins and pulled her away from a patch of winter greens. They stepped into the path Sam cut some hours before, and forged deeper into the strange silence of the meadow stronghold.

The rusted iron gates stood open. Steve managed to get Hope through the gate, but she refused to go a step further, pushing her bulk against the iron bars when he tried to drag her after him. It didn’t make him feel any better about the place, but Sam was in there somewhere and Steve wasn’t going to sit outside and cajole the horse when his friend might need him. Steve glared at her.  She stared back at him, projecting baleful stubbornness. Sighing, he finally dragged the blanket out from behind the saddle and wrapped it around her before hooking the reins over a curlicue in the gate’s design, taking a moment to run his hand down her nose and whisper meaningless reassurances. He followed Sam’s footsteps to the castle door, noting with concern that he was weaving by the time he made it through the gates.

“Sam?” Steve called, poking his head in through the opening in the massive oak doors. Sam must have been too exhausted to bother closing it after wrangling it open. Steve thought he heard a clatter of movement, but after several seconds of silence, heard nothing further. He slid in through the opening and paused just long enough to light a torch taken from his kit. Steve considered closing the door to keep the wind and snow out, but if there was something nasty lurking in the halls, he wanted a quick escape available.

Holding the flame aloft, Steve called out again, “Hello?”

The shuffle of movement that followed was pronounced in the echoing silence, deliberate. He tracked the sound to a left-hand hallway, flipping his shield off his back once more. The soft scuffling steps led him down the hallway, around a corner, and to a set of stairs leading down. Steve followed quietly, frowning at the sound. It was too light to be a man’s footsteps, too light, he thought, even to be a child’s. Perhaps an animal?

The thought ran out of his head the moment he reached the bottom of the steps and the torchlight cast a flickering glow over a shape hunched in the near corner of a cell

“ _Sam!_ ”

Sam woke with a jerk, pulling away sharply. He let out a relieved noise and stood, wrapping his hands around the bars. “Took you long enough, Captain.”

“Sorry, I got turned around somewhere north of _what the heck are you doing here?_ ” Steve demanded. He slid the torch into a holder on the wall and examined the cell. “Who locked you up? The place looks like no one’s disturbed the dust in decades.”

Sam shook his head, the whites of his eyes showing bright against his dark skin. “I don’t know, sir, I didn’t get a good look at him. He was fast, and strong and I’m not sure that he was human.”

Steve gave him a sharp look. “Let’s get you out of here before we have to figure it out,” he said firmly. The hinges on the door looked weak with rust. If he could get the right leverage, he might be able to just pull it straight off the hinges, but he wouldn’t be able to do it quietly. If there really was someone – or some _thing –_ in the castle, they would hear the clatter.

“Stand out of the way,” Steve ordered. Sam backed up to the rear of the cell and covered his ears as Steve got a firm grip on the bars. He shoved forward hard, and then yanked backward, jerking against the hinges. They shrieked and whined like wounded animals, but he made himself repeat the action instead of stilling to listen for pursuit.

“Steve, look out—!” Sam shouted a heartbeat before a hand like solid steel landed hard on Steve’s shoulder and ripped him away. Steve hit the far wall, the shield strapped to his back taking most of the impact. He dropped to his knees, feeling his collarbone shift under the skin, definitely broken. Steve ignored the break and jumped to his feet – a lifetime of getting up after being pushed down meant not having to think about standing. A flash of silver whizzed by him as he jerked to the side just in time to avoid a fist that sent up chips of rock when it hit the wall by Steve’s head. Steve twisted to get the shield off his back, brought it up just in time to deflect a backhanded blow, and then shoved forward with all his strength and what leverage he could get from a foot on the wall. His assailant was strangely quiet as they shoved each other around the room, Steve knocking him across the body hard enough to break bones on a normal man, the dark figure catching him twice in the ribs and leaving sharp bursts of agony behind.

They separated, pushing away from one another in one of the mutual pauses that broke all fights. Steve heaved in half a dozen startled breaths. With Thor and Bruce gone from the castle, Steve hadn’t found a sparring partner who could put a dent in him in months, and he was unprepared for the ferocity of his attacker. He winced and tried not to favor his right side, guessing that at least two of the ribs were fractured. 

“You pack quite a punch there,” Steve observed.

A deep growl was his response. The man’s face was invisible with the torch behind him, but his outline looked ragged and wild. “Leave,” a voice like a wolf’s growl snarled from the darkness.

“My man – let him go and we will,” Steve said, more than ready to agree to getting out of the strange castle.

“No.”

Steve’s lips pursed and he readied his shield on his left side, testing the weight of it against his collarbone. It hurt, but he could tell the break was already starting to mend. Steve circled slowly to the left, trying to get his opponent into the light. The man moved with him, grace and power, and _dangerdangerdanger_ a gibbering voice in the back of Steve’s head shrieked. Steve ignored it, like he always did, and took a cautious step forward. The dark figure struck out with a lightning fast blow, tearing his shield away for a moment, leaving Steve vulnerable and exposed. Steve danced back, barely avoiding a strike that might have killed him, and for just a moment, a brief instant, he saw the other man’s face.

_Bucky?_

He couldn’t say it. He tried to, but his tongue wouldn’t form the syllables. In his shock, he dropped his guard completely and earned himself a solid strike on the jaw that sent him staggering back into Sam’s cell door. He’d blocked everything out while they were fighting, but he could hear Sam now, screaming threats and curses until he was nearly incoherent, peppering in Steve’s name whenever he could attach it to an insult, shouting _leave, run, go. Idiot!_

“Wait!” Steve held up a hand, forestalling the next attack. He let his shield go, wincing at the clatter of it on the stone. A ludicrous thought flashed through his head that Howard would have his hide for chipping the paint. “What if I stayed in his place?” Steve offered frantically when Bucky hesitated. Behind him, Sam went nuts with loud denials, but the voice in Steve’s head had given up the _danger_ mantra and instead chanted, _BuckyBuckyBucky, oh, gods, Bucky, what_ _’s happened to you?_

For a moment, there was silence. “Why would you stay?” Bucky asked in a suspicious growl.

 _Because I can_ _’t keep existing without you_ , Steve wanted to shout, but instead his lips said, “He’s my responsibility.”

“Don’t you _dare_ put that on me, Rogers, you shit, don’t you dare!” Sam rattled the bars at Steve’s back, jarring his ribs and making him wince.

“Shut up, Sam,” Steve ordered sharply. Sam quieted into simmering rage, pacing in his cell. Steve looked back at Bucky. “I’ll stay. Whatever it is that Sam did wrong, I’ll stay in his place. Let him go.”

Bucky considered the offer in brooding silence, shuffling further away from the pool of light. “I’ll never let you leave,” he warned, his voice curling darkly around the room, threat and promise whispering at Steve’s feet.

 _I will never leave you._ “I understand.”

“Steve, you can’t do this. You have responsibilities! You’re supposed to be finding the prince. What about—” His voice cut off as though a hand were slammed over his mouth. Steve glanced back at him, saw Sam trying the name again, and then again, growing more confused and frustrated with each unsuccessful attempt. So it wasn’t just Steve who couldn’t make himself say Bucky’s name.

“Done,” Bucky snarled. He grabbed Steve and threw him away from the cell, ignoring Steve’s sharp gasp of pain as he hit the wall again. Bucky tore the cell door off its hinges with one sharp yank and threw it away with a clatter. Steve ducked instinctively, but the door hit the opposite wall, nowhere near him. Bucky dragged a spitting, cussing, flailing Sam out of the cell by his combat harness and threw him to Steve’s feet. Steve caught him by the shoulders, ignored the flair of pain, and put a hand over Sam’s mouth to shut him up.

“Hope is tied up outside, and my gear is still with her. Follow the stream to the south and it should let out close to the main road if we are where I think we are. Don’t stop unless you absolutely must, and try to make it to a farmstead if you can’t get home by nightfall. The sky looks bad, Sam, and you don’t have much daylight.” He hesitated, but added, “I found Red. I’m sorry.”

Sam pulled away from his hand. “This is bullshit and you know it! Get your ass up and get out of here. I’m not letting you stay in this fucking cell for me.”

“It’s not just for you.” Steve looked up at Bucky, a looming presence waiting impatiently for them to conclude their goodbyes. Sam followed his gaze, and there must have been just enough light. He sucked in a surprised breath. “I can’t leave,” Steve said quietly. “Tell the king and queen that I’m sorry. I don’t think you’ll have many more days to search, if any at all. If you do, I’ve left all my maps and notes in my room. I kept good records, but talk to Pepper Potts if you need help. You can handle it from here.” 

“Enough,” Bucky interrupted when Sam tried to protest again. He took two giant strides and scooped Sam up by one arm, dragging him out of the room before Steve could get out a word in protest. Sam’s strident cursing echoed in the hall, and Steve clearly heard the castle’s front door as it slammed several minutes later.

Steve waited, staring numbly at the cell. There was only one, and it wouldn’t be much use with the door a twisted heap in the corner, but whatever had been done to Bucky made him _strong_ , stronger maybe than Steve with Erskine’s potion pumping through his veins. Steve didn’t doubt that Bucky could get the door twisted into a shape that would hold. Bucky returned a moment later, freezing in the doorway as if surprised that Steve was still there.

“Get up,” Bucky ordered shortly, and then spun and stalked away.

Steve hauled himself to his feet, breathing through the protests of his broken ribs, and stooped to catch his shield and his torch on the way out. He caught up to Bucky in the entryway and had to half-jog to stay with him. He tried to say his name again, tried to ask why he hadn’t come home, and why Bucky didn’t recognize him, but he couldn’t say any of those things. It was as if he forgot how to speak as soon as the words touched his tongue.

“How long have you been here?” Steve asked instead, relieved that he could speak at all.

Startled by his voice, Bucky jerked and looked at him sharply over one shoulder. The light caught his face entirely for the first time and Steve nearly swallowed his tongue at the shock of the blazing green eyes that stared back at him. His surprise must have shown clearly on his face, because Bucky snarled at him and didn’t answer. He led Steve up a flight of stairs to the narrow hall on the second floor.

He shoved a thick door open, glared at Steve, and snapped, “Stay out of the west wing.”

Before Steve could answer, or beg Bucky to look at him, or reach out and touch his face, Bucky turned and stormed away, torn cloak billowing out behind him, the darkness quickly swallowing him up. Steve stared after him, and decided not to follow when his friend dropped to all fours as he ran around the corner.

~*~

Steve paced the length of the dusty room, mind whirling with the possibilities of how Bucky could have ended up in the castle, what could have happened to make him forget everything, why he looked more like a wolf on two legs than he did a man. Steve wasn’t a scholar of magic and the only thing he could come up with was that it was obviously a curse, but _why_ , or how, or who would have done it? Twice he had to stop himself from flinging the door open and running after Bucky, demanding answers, just wrapping his arms around his friend until Bucky remembered him.

He knelt in the pale light of a single tall window and quickly traced a map in the dust, recalling the area he and Sam planned to search, sketching out the stream and the mountains, marking the place where he found Red with a smudged circle. He hesitated with his hand hovering above the map, suddenly not sure of exactly where the castle was in relation to anything else. He’d gone south after finding Red, hadn’t he? But didn’t he turn east after crossing the stream? He traced the route with a fingernail, but when he got to where he thought the meadow must be, his finger was north of the mountains. That couldn’t be right. He tried again, and ended up hovering over Glass Lake.

Steve sat back and stared at the map dumbly. Even before the potion, he’d always had a remarkable memory and sense of spatial awareness, and since the potion his memory was absolutely perfect. The spell over the place must be powerful for it fail him so spectacularly. A smile ripped across his face as he remembered Tony pacing his workshop, snarling _magic is the most ridiculous, illogical collection of bullshit to ever shit on the realm! It has no_ rules _, it doesn_ _’t_ make sense! Steve had always accepted that magic just _was_ , and never put much thought into it, but he could clearly understand Tony frustration now. A new terror occurred to him as he stared at the map, and he wondered if Sam was going to be able to find his way out at all, and if Steve had condemned him to a slow death in the cold to save him from a relatively safe cell.

Dragging his fingers across his forehead, Steve begged, “Be okay, Sam.”

~*~

A polite knock brought Steve back to the door twenty minutes after he gave up on the map. He opened it, but the hallway beyond was empty. Frowning, he leaned out the door and looked both ways down the hall.

“Down here, Captain.”

Steve looked down and stared blankly at the round clock he found at his feet. He pinched the bridge of his nose, checked down the hall again, looked back at the clock and asked, “Coulson?”

“Unfortunately,” the clock answered. “Follow me.”

A candle flame flared up a few feet away and Steve watched incredulously as it was joined by two more, and then a candelabra hopped closer. “Hey, Cap. You look taller than I remember.”

“Clint.” Steve’s mind went blank for a second, and then flew through a ridiculous possibility. “Is everyone else here as well? The prince, Natasha, Tony, Bruce?”

“All accounted for, in various states,” Coulson confirmed, taking a dozen steps back so he could look up at Steve. He didn’t have eyes, so Steve had no idea how he could tell that Coulson was looking at him, or how either of them were talking without mouths, or—

“Loki,” Steve guessed with a heavy sigh. The prince had seemed genuinely upset over his missing brother, but transfiguration was his specialty and his temper was legendary. Steve should have thought it before, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Loki would do something _this_ vicious. In the past, his pranks had worn off after a few days at most, and were generally harmless if humiliating. Despite that, Steve couldn’t think of another sorcerer in the kingdom who could manage turning a person into an object so thoroughly that, six months later, the spell still held.

“That’s our guess, as well. The others are in the kitchen,” Coulson reported, his voice growing a touch impatient.

Steve shook his head and ducked back into the room to grab his shield and torch. He had extinguished the torch after Bucky left him in the room to preserve it, but it lit up again easily enough.

Clint made an outraged sputtering noise like the guttering of dying candles while his flame brightened. “Trying to say my candles aren’t good enough for you?” he demanded, curling his arms down to plant them on the curve of his silver body, the candles on either hand pointing off at a strange angle. Steve just stared at him, completely at a loss for how to answer. Coulson-the-Clock nudged Clint-the-Candleholder, shoving him back an inch.

“Stop acting like a child,” Coulson ordered, and his voice really was _Coulson_ , sounded just the same as it would have coming from the man himself. He nudged Clint again and the candelabra cast a dirty look at the torch before he turned around and hopped after Coulson, the light of his candles swaying with each step, giving the walls a nightmarish aspect.

Breathing slowly to control the absurd panic, afraid that he would start laughing if he didn’t breathe carefully, Steve followed them down the hall, back down the stairs, and down the same hallway that led to the cell. They bypassed the stairs leading down, turning instead to the right. A wide hall terminated at a pair of double doors with a warm orange glow seeping out from beneath. Clint determinedly pushed against the door, succeeding in getting it open a few inches. Steve leaned over and set two fingers to the door higher up, nudging it. Clint made a triumphant noise and hopped through the opening, Coulson following behind with a long suffering sigh.

“I see you’ve still got your legs, Captain Gorgeous,” an unmistakable voice boomed from one corner of the large kitchen as soon as he stepped through the door.

Steve turned, and even after the day he’d had, he was still shocked when he found himself staring at a giant boiler with a sinister-looking grate, fire crackling madly in its belly, rather than eccentric genius Anthony Stark. “Tony…?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh, you have fingers too. Pick up that wrench and come over here, I have a screw loose.” He started to cackle, the fire stoking up higher as he did. Steve couldn’t tell if this was just Tony, naturally delighted in a new situation that he could make jokes of, or if something about being _a boiler_ had finally cracked him.

“Please take the wrench,” Natasha said from the table, her voice echoing out of an elegantly curved samovar. She shuffled forward on the table to nudge a wrench closer to him. “None of us can do it, and he’s been bitching about it for days.”

Putting the torch out and setting the shield down, Steve picked up the wrench, eyeing them all uncertainly. He crossed the kitchen to Tony’s side, frowning at the ancient iron.

“Right back here,” Tony said, and managed to convey the screw’s exact position as clearly as if he’d pointed to it. Steve had no idea how he knew to slide around to the boiler’s left and crouch down, but he found it immediately, a square lozenge of rusted iron barely sticking out from Tony’s wide belly. Steve fitted the wrench and gave it a turn. Tony moaned obscenely, and Steve got the distinct impression that he was shivering. Setting his jaw, Steve tightened the screw until it was snug against the metal plating and stood up without acknowledging Tony’s theatrics.

“Thanks, sunshine,” Tony purred, the fire flickering in a distinctly pleased way.

“Not a problem,” Steve responded automatically as he set the wrench down and looked around the room. “Where are Bruce and Prince Thor?”

“I’m here,” Bruce said miserably. It took Steve a second to pinpoint him as the stove, looking depressed on the far side of the kitchen. “Don’t get too close. I catch fire when I get angry.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve answered succinctly, not giving in to the horrified laughter clawing at his chest. “Thor?”

“Open the top of that door,” Coulson suggested, turning to gesture at a wide delivery door that opened top and bottom. Steve unlatched it, letting the top part swing inward. A massive cream draft horse shoved his head through and Steve took a hasty step back.

“Fear not, Captain, it is I.”

“Your highness?” Steve asked numbly. He abruptly remembered the cruel snickers of the court as they viciously passed along the rumor that Prince Loki enjoyed the attention of the palace’s horses a little too much, and he groaned aloud. “I would almost say that this serves you right, your highness, except this is taking things too far, even for Loki!”

“I did not intentionally start that vile rumor, Captain,” Thor protested, but his voice was somber and serious. “I believe I have indeed stated, many a time, that my brother prefers the company of horses to that of women, but I did not mean it in that context. I have attempted to squash the rumor, but alas, my brother does not have many friends at court.” He hung his head sadly, his white-blonde mane hanging low over his massive neck. He was absolutely the largest horse Steve had ever seen, the bottom of his jaw easily topping Steve’s head. Yet despite his monstrous size, he looked almost pitiful. Steve reached forward without thought to stroke his soft nose and Thor made a disturbingly horsey noise of affection, pushing his giant head against Steve’s chest.

“Truer words…” Clint muttered from the floor. Steve unthinkingly picked him up in one hand and Coulson in the other, moving them to the table. Coulson straightened himself out exactly as he did the one and only time Thor caught him up in one of his famous bear hugs. Clint immediately hopped across the table to Natasha, who wordlessly permitted his proximity.

“Alright, so you’ve all been put under a curse. Anyone know how to break it?” Steve asked, putting himself into problem-solving mode and ignoring the insanity of the situation until he had time to process it properly.

A chorus of ‘no’ ran around the room, but Thor added, “We believe that our friend, the master of this castle, must be the key. It is his name alone that none here may speak. Nor can we discuss his relationship to our party, or provide him any details of his life. Our own lives are somewhat hazy. He, however, can remember nothing prior to waking in this castle.”

“He’s a little… bitter about it,” Tony added.

“And seems to lose more and more of his humanity as the days pass.” Natasha turned to look at Clint, who was stretching in front of her. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get you to steam my back,” Clint answered as if it were obvious, “I think there’s rust back there and it itches.”

Steve took in the entire ludicrous scene and choked out a laugh. He rubbed his eyes with two fingers and then let his breath out in a cleansing gust. There was every chance that he was actually unconscious in the woods somewhere, slowly freezing to death while his mind cobbled up a dream to occupy him, but until he had proof otherwise, he was just going to with Loki throwing a temper tantrum and deal with it. So his friends were talking household items, and a horse. Stranger things had probably happened somewhere to someone. 

“Is there any silver polish?” he asked, apparently mollifying Clint’s hurt feelings.

“Top shelf, above the sink,” Coulson answered promptly. Steve wasn’t sure how the clock could have gotten up on the self to know its contents, but he didn’t ask. He found a dusty glass jar of polish over the sink, and fished an equally dusty, moth-ridden rag out of a drawer. The polish was a cracked block, but Steve managed to get it workable with a little warm water from Natasha’s pot – trying hard not to blush as she matter-of-factly opened the spigot to splash water onto his rag.

The first morning after the procedure, Steve had stepped in front of a mirror experienced a momentary panic of not recognizing himself. It was the most surreal experience of his life, but sitting at the table with a talking candelabra squirming in his hands was infinitely more mind boggling. Clint alternately giggled and sighed as Steve polished away speckles of rust. Coulson, Natasha, and Thor filled him in on the slow decline of his best friend from confused-and-in-pain, to the barely recognizable almost-animal Steve encountered in the cell. Steve focused on his task so he wouldn’t have to think about Bucky waking up frightened, injured, and ill, without his memories, or the six months of isolation and agony that followed. He was grateful that they didn’t ask for his input, and for Clint’s occasional amusing anecdotes. Tony put in comments from his corner, obviously annoyed that he was stationary, and Steve wasn’t sure how the man was still passingly sane – the Tony he knew could hardly stay still for more than a few minutes. Bruce didn’t speak much, but made a lot of clattering noises during the conversation.

“And we’re not the only ones. The castle is full of animated objects. None of them know for sure if they were ever human. Most of the time, _we_ aren’t even sure we were once human,” Natasha concluded as Steve set Clint down and the candelabra hopped over to examine his reflection in Natasha’s side. She silently marched away from him and installed herself between Steve’s hands, giving the impression of looking over a shoulder at him expectantly. Steve felt his cheeks grow warm, but he didn’t say a word as he worked the dried cake with the rag and set to polishing the curve of her belly.

“So,” Steve mused, working at a spot of rust under the curve of a handle, “It’s possible that Loki has been doing this for a long time.”

“It is also possible,” Thor hastened to interject, “That this castle has been long cursed, and Loki only sent us here in addition to those under a pre-existing spell.”

“Thor,” Tony said, his voice not placating, but not mean, “I know you love your brother, but do you _really_ think this could be a coincidence?”

It sounded like an old argument. Steve let it wash over him as he tidied up Natasha’s silver body. She turned when he finished her back, and held still even when Steve sensed a sudden tension that might have been ticklishness.

“Dinner’s ready.”

All activity in the kitchen stopped and they turned as one mass to look at Bruce, sitting now with a bubbling pot on his surface, long rails along his sides lifted like arms to stir it. Steve finally noticed the scent of a meat broth, spices, and vegetables. He’d been ignoring it as wishful thinking, but his mouth started to water immediately and his stomach growled.

“Where did you get the ingredients for that?” Steve asked slowly. The kitchen was not exactly well stocked, though it was as clean as his mobility-limited friends could make it. He didn’t imagine that any of them but Thor needed to eat, and he couldn’t see Thor hunting and dressing a deer in his current state. Well, maybe not dressing it, but he could probably still run a deer down and just _step_ on it.

“Magic,” Bruce answered, reaching up to adjust the flue on his chimney. When Steve didn’t respond, Bruce turned his attention back to him and made a huffing noise, expelling a gust of warm air from the oven. None of the others seemed at all concerned about the mysterious pot of soup, but Bruce asked, “Tony where to do you get wood to stoke the fire?”

Tony made an unhappy grating sound. He sighed and muttered, “Magic.”

For a self-professed wielder of _actually verifiable science not your mysterious wand waving crap_ , that had to be a painful admission for him. Steve would have patted his shoulder, but his ‘shoulder’ glowed a deep red and Steve didn’t like the idea of taking all the skin off his palm, even if it would heal before morning.

“I just decided you should have dinner, and then the ingredients were there. How do you think the master gets his food? Come eat.”

“Wash your hands first,” Coulson ordered. While Steve stood to obey, Coulson took a flying leap off the table, much to Steve’s horror, but only bounced once on the floor and waddled off, unharmed, to the base of the cabinet. He leapt onto the counter – a distance of more than four times his height— and then on top of the breadbox to shove the cupboard open. “Plate, bowl, and cup. Up, go get washed. We have a guest.”

Steve had to remind himself again that he was going to accept this strange reality as he watched a plate roll out of the cabinet, jostle against the bowl that jumped out immediately after, and shove a teacup out of the way to get to the sink. Hot water poured out of the faucet without anyone turning the lever, and the dishes fought over space under the spray.

Washing his hands hastily, Steve turned away from them and approached Bruce to peer inside the pot. “You call him ‘the master?’” he asked, stirring the soup. It was a rich broth, and his stomach cramped the closer he got to it. He would have just taken the pot, but the soup bowl hopped up and down impatiently on the counter until he picked it up, still damp from its shower. The plate and cup sulked behind.

“He calls himself Beast or Monster,” Bruce answered softly, “And we can’t say his name. For whatever reason, he is the master of this castle now. It fits.”

Steve swallowed hard, remembering the flash of Bucky’s eyes, an unsettling shade of green, the color of Loki’s magic. His heart ached at the thought of how lonely and frustrated Bucky must have been the last six months. The bowl squirmed in his hand, straining toward the soup, and Steve picked up the ladle, but stopped, horrified by the sudden thought that this might be a _person_ , maybe a _child_. His stomach twisted, remembering the bowls that the Jouten made from Aesir skulls during the last Great War.

“It’s alright,” Bruce said as though reading his mind, “It’s weird for you, but it’s not weird for us.” He chuckled wryly, the fire in his oven popping in counter melody, “It should be, but it’s not. Something about it… this curse. We like to be useful. Serve a purpose.”

Steve glanced down at the bowl, and it seemed to look back up at him, hopeful and excited. “What’s your name?” Steve asked awkwardly. He should at least show some good manners.

“Most of the others don’t talk,” Clint said, jumping up on the counter but keeping a careful distance from Bruce. “We’re not even sure if they’re cursed people, or enchanted objects.”

The bowl didn’t have anything to add. Steve reluctantly filled it, surprised and relieved when it went completely immobile in his hand at the first splash of liquid. Coulson kicked one pewter foot at the breadbox and it reluctantly opened to reveal a fresh-baked loaf of bread, and then quickly slammed closed again when Steve tore off a generous chunk and put the rest back. Butter was provided by a mute, though polite icebox, and Steve tried not to feel squeamish when Natasha poured hot water through a sieve of tealeaves for him.

“This is going to be a strange night,” Steve concluded.

“How do you think _we_ feel?” Tony muttered from the corner,


	3. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

The guards ushered Sam into the royal quarters as soon as he stumbled through the front gates, leading an exhausted Hope in behind him. He was soaked to the bone and he couldn’t stop shivering. The snow had started falling in earnest hours before, and Sam could barely see his hand in front of his face by the time he made it to the gates.

“Lieutenant,” the king greeted from his seat, leaning his head against the high back to meet Sam’s eyes. He looked pale and ill, but still strong as folded steel. If Sam didn’t know he was sick, he might not have guessed. The queen looked up with hopeful eyes, and Prince Loki rose from his seat. Sitting on the king’s left side, Colonel James Rhodes turned, clearly waiting for a report.

Loki beat the colonel to it. “Any news on my brother?” he asked, his lips pinched into a thin line, worry marring his smooth brow.

Hating to disappoint them, but far too cold and miserable to be appropriately apologetic, Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

The entire room seemed to sag in disappointment, growing dimmer and smaller. The king braced his forehead on his hand and let out a heavy breath. “I am told that you came in alone on Captain Rogers’ steed?”

“Yes, my liege,” Sam answered. He swayed on his feet. He opened his mouth to elaborate, but a wave of shudders ran up his spine and he closed his eyes, riding through them. He heard a swish of fabric and slippers on the carpet, and then the queen wrapped an arm around him.

“Come sit by the fire, you’re soaked.” She led him to a chair by the roaring blaze and his shoulders unknotted all at once. He sighed, curling into the warmth. “We won’t keep you long,” she promised. “Where is Captain Rogers?”

Sam shuddered hard and bowed his head. “I don’t remember. I lost Red in the forest, and I walked out… but it’s hard to remember what happened after that. I _do_ remember Steve – Captain Rogers – found me, and sent me home with Hope, but I don’t remember why, and I don’t remember where. All I remember for sure is finding the main road. I spent the night at a farmhouse, and rode straight for home at dawn.” He looked up at the concerned expressions of the royal family.

Queen Frigga leaned over him, wrapping a hand around his forehead and tilting his chin so she could see his eyes. “You’ve been ensorcelled, Lieutenant Wilson,” she reported worriedly. Frigga took her hand away from his forehead and used it to brush her fingers down his cheek. “Go and get warm, Lieutenant. Return when you’re restored.” Frigga stroked a hand over his head and smiled sadly, her eyes liquid with concern. Having that concern directed at him was enough to melt his soul, even knowing that the bulk of it was directed at her missing son and the implications of a member of the search party coming back ensorcelled.

Colonel Rhodes stood and made a gesture with one hand, beckoning Sam out of the room. Sam followed, just hoping that he at least had a chance to warm up before Rhodes led him to Pepper Potts for an interrogation.

~*~

“Rise and shine, silver-moon!” Clint called, hopping onto his bedside table and flaring brightly while the curtain-holders reached over and drew the tattered tapestries away.

Beast snarled and pulled the blankets over his head, hiding from the weak daylight. He felt Coulson and Natasha land on the bed and walk across it. Their metal feet felt nice walking up his sore back, not that he would ever tell them. If he simply chose to be more difficult to get out of bed than he needed to be, that wasn’t any concern of theirs.

Coulson braced his feet on Beast’s neck and nudged his handle under the hem of the blanket. Together, he and Natasha pulled the blanket away. “Get up, sir,” Coulson ordered. Despite always calling him _sir_ , and once even trying _master_ on for size (it didn’t take), Beast was under no illusions about who ran the castle. It was good; he felt himself slipping further and further away, and he knew the way a bear knows to hibernate that one day he would walk out of the castle and vanish into the woods. Knowing that Coulson would be there to take care of the others after he left was a comfort.

Beast flipped over in the bed and buried his head in the pillows. He stayed there until Natasha poured cold water on his chest, sending him shooting out of the bed with a startled yowl. He snarled at her, and she stared back, unimpressed with the threat.

“Go see Steve,” she ordered.

Sulking, Beast mopped up the water with a corner of the blanket. “Who’s Steve?” he asked.

“How many visitors do you think we get in this place?” Clint demanded by way of answer. He extinguished his candles and hopped onto the bed, helping Natasha and Coulson put the bed back into some kind of order. Beast sat down in the scarred bedside chair and watched them, as ever impressed to see a clock, a candelabra, and a samovar tidying up a bed like a trio of tiny maids. He could have done it himself, but then he wouldn’t be able to watch them wrangling the blankets without hands.

“Get dressed,” Coulson ordered, looking at him sideways as he bounced on the pillow to even it out. It was an exercise in futility. The room was a disaster, most of the furniture in splinters, every reflective surface shattered and ground into powder, tapestries torn, wallpaper shredded, but they tried anyway. Beast let them. “Go,” Coulson repeated when Beast didn’t move from his seat.

Slouching further into the chair, one of only two pieces of furniture that could still be used for its intended purpose, Beast muttered, “I don’t want to see him.”

The three stopped their work and stared at him. “You have to!” Clint said, “He’s maybe the only chance we have to break this curse!”

“You don’t know that.” He turned in his chair and stared out the window. The snow piled high in miniature mountain ranges across the meadow, and the sky promised more snow by nightfall. Soon they would be trapped in the dark castle. Even more trapped than they were already.

“Every curse can be broken,” Coulson said after a long moment of silence. “And it has to be you. We’ve discussed this.”

When Beast didn’t respond, Natasha stalked across the bed and sloshed another handful of water at him. “I want to go home,” she snapped, “So you are going to go down there, and you are going to be a gentleman, and you are going to get to know that man. You _will_ remember your name, and we will get out of here by the spring. Any questions?”

He glared at her and she glared back, steam starting rise from around her lid. The next time she splashed him, the water would be boiling, he knew. “How am I supposed to get to know him?” he demanded, braving a scalding. “He’s…” Beast searched for the words. His mind felt frighteningly sluggish and he had trouble sometimes recalling the simplest words, covering up for the lapses with an array of animal noises that were becoming a more familiar vocabulary to him every day.

“He’s perfect,” Beast finished. “And I’m…” He looked down at his silver hand. When he woke, only his left arm and right leg were covered in the gleaming metal. Over the last six months, the metal had slowly worked its way over his body until most of his right side up to his chest, and the left side of his back from his shoulder to his hips was covered. It hurt, the gnawing progress of the metal, but the pain had become so much his constant companion, he almost didn’t notice it anymore.

“If there is anyone in the whole world who won’t care about the way you look, it’s him,” Clint said. They all turned to look at him, processing his words. It was difficult, and in most cases impossible for them to talk about Beast’s life before he woke in the castle.

“Did I know him?” Beast asked, “Before?”

Clint tried to answer, straining against the curse, but finally slumped in defeat. Beast could tell the others were trying to speak as well, but he turned away from them after only a second. Their inability to speak could mean that he _did_ know this ‘Steve’ in his former life, but it could just as easily mean that they thought he possessed some magical quality that would allow him to see through Beast’s monstrous appearance. It could mean nothing at all.

“What should I say?” Beast asked without looking at them again. “I hurt him, broke bones, hurt his friend. I threw his friend into the snow and scared his horse. He’ll hate me.”

“Just figures that Steve wouldn’t mention the broken bones,” Clint observed, his voice half amused and half worried.

“Indeed,” Coulson agreed.

Beast assumed that Steve would hear about their displeasure soon. Beast himself had been dressed down for hiding or neglecting injuries, but it didn’t matter on him. They healed quickly, and he hardly felt anything less than the most severe injuries against the backdrop of the constant fire creeping over his skin. He collected a pair of ragged pants from the floor and the blanket he used for a cloak, but stopped and looked down at himself. Did he want this human to see the extent of his malformation? With the others, he didn’t care. They all knew, and if any of them were capable of breaking the curse, it would have already happened.

He looked back at his three companions, huddled in quiet conversation. When they spoke to each other, sometimes it was only noises – the bubble of boiling water, the ticking of a clock, the hiss of flame. Beast didn’t think they knew and he wasn’t going to tell them. The curse was eating them all up, slowly consuming whatever might have been human about them. Telling them about the loss of speech wouldn’t change anything, it would just make them worry. He dropped the pants and blanket, picking his way through the wreckage of the master’s suite to a hulking shape under a sheet. Beast pulled the sheet away and the wardrobe underneath shuddered and shook, sending up clouds of dust.

The wardrobe _humph_ _’ed_ unhappily, opening her doors and rattling the drawers inside. She shifted her ponderous weight and glared at Beast. He waited until she settled down and grabbed one of the doors, but she smacked him with a drawer as soon as he had it open.

“Enough of that,” Coulson ordered the wardrobe from the bed, “Do you want this curse broken or not?”

Settling down after that, the wardrobe let him pick out a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of pants in good order, but slammed the door sharply as soon as had the items in hand. Beast ignored her and beat the worst of the dust out of the items. They weren’t much better than what he usually wore, but the pants fit with a length of cord to cinch them to his waist, and the shirt hid most of the metal. He stood uncertainly in front of the bed, feeling strange fully clothed, and the dust itched. He glared when they didn’t say anything, reaching for the hem of the shirt to tear it off.

“It’s fine,” Natasha interrupted. “We’ll get something cleaned up and mended for you, but it will work for now.”

“Remember not to scare him,” Clint added as Beast turned reluctantly for the door.

Natasha shoved Clint roughly, knocking him over. “Nothing scares Steve,” she reminded him. “Just try not to break any more bones,” she amended.

“And use more than five words in a sentence ever so often,” was Coulson’s advice.

“Walk upright,” Clint suggested, still laid out on the bed.

“And control your temper!” they concluded as one voice.

Beast bellowed at all three of them in irritation, fleeing the room and slamming the door behind him.

~*~

Steve was… yes, _perfect_ was the right word for him. Broad and muscled, tall, his limbs tapering almost elegantly, obviously strong. He moved with a strange hyperawareness of the space he occupied that made him powerful, dangerous, but he was so careful with everything he touched, gentle in the most alluring ways. Beast watched him from the stairwell as he helped a small army of animated furniture clear out the entryway. A pair of coatracks dragged a damaged chair over to Steve, tapping him on the shoulder to get his attention. Steve turned, knelt down in front of the chair, and put a hand on it. He examined the broken leg, and then pointed the coatracks to a pile of furniture that was damaged, but still salvageable. Without the slightest sign of effort, he leaned over and picked up a massive entryway bench so that a pair of brooms could sweep under it, and then crouched down to dust it off.

Beast stayed at the top of the stairs, still as a statue, and watched the entryway turn from a heap of junk to an open space, much larger than he expected it to be. He watched the chandeliers drop down so Steve could clean away the cobwebs, and then the big man got on his knees to help the brushes scrub the stones. Beast didn’t move at all until Steve turned his attention to the stairs and spotted him. Beast froze like a cornered animal, and then a sunrise of a smile opened on Steve’s face. He jogged up the stairs to Beast, his smile not faltering when he got closer, if anything, seeming to grow wider.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Steve said, making a gesture back toward the entryway. Beast looked over Steve’s shoulder, not sure what he was supposed to be minding. “The cleaning,” Steve clarified, “They all seemed restless, and I’ve never been good with just sitting still, so I thought we could do some cleaning before the snows hit. We got a good storm last night, and there will probably be a whiteout by the end of the week. It’s getting to that time.”

Steve just kept talking, and Beast finally realized that he was nervous. Of course he was nervous, Beast was a monster, a predator. Steve should be nervous. He glared. “Stop.”

Steve shut his mouth, but his smile didn’t fade. He rubbed his wrist over his nose, smearing a line of dust. “Sorry, always did talk too much. Are you…” He struggled for words and Beast wondered if the curse was getting to him too, stripping away his language already. “How did you sleep?” Steve asked finally, making Beast blink in surprise.

“I slept,” he answered, not sure how else to respond. On some nights he slept, on others he didn’t. There was nothing in between, no varying degrees of sleep. Steve’s expression became uncertain, his smile finally dropping away as he shifted his weight on the stair. Beast had the disturbing impression that Steve wanted to touch him and he took a step backward to discourage him. He tried to think of something to say, and finally blurted out, “Did you sleep?”

Steve nodded. He offered Beast a tentative smile. They stood across from one another for several awkward seconds, the silence growing thick and uncomfortable. Steve pointed over his shoulder with a thumb and asked, “Did you want to join us?”

Beast hiked an eyebrow and looked down at the mayhem. Two of the mops were ganging up on a dustpan, trying to force it out of the way so they could get to the floor. Steve turned to see what he was looking at and planted his fists on his hips. “Cut that out, you two!” he called down, and the mops started guiltily before racing off.

Beast didn’t know why, but something about the tone of Steve’s voice, the cant of his hips, the set of his shoulders made him laugh. Steve turned back around, face once again bright with pleasure. Beast could hear Steve’s heart thumping in his chest, fast, like scared prey, but the Beast still had enough humanity left to realize that Steve was happy, excited. It seemed ridiculous that something as insignificant as Beast laughing could make someone like Steve happy. His laughter faded away and he wanted to ask _Do you know me? Do you know my name?_ But he didn’t. He’d asked all the others, and their voices locked up anytime they tried to answer him about his life, his name, who he was, who could have cursed them, and why. They’d tried to circumvent the curse by talking to each other instead of him, and Beast tried to eavesdrop on them in hopes that they could give away the information if they didn’t know he was there, but nothing worked. For some reason, he thought that seeing Steve struggle to speak would be immeasurably worse than watching his other companions go still and quiet.

“I was going to head to the kitchen and get some lunch after I finish this,” Steve explained after another moment of silence. “Would you like to eat with me?”

Beast hesitated. He preferred to eat alone, mostly to hide how unsatisfying he found the food. He’d kept the urges down so far, but he found cooked meat increasingly less palatable, and thought that one day he wouldn’t be able to eat it at all. Beast firmed his shoulders; that was exactly why he needed to regain his name, his humanity with it, free his companions.

“I will,” he answered shortly, and then turned and left Steve standing bemusedly on the stairs.

~*~

Beast paced the narrow corridor of cleared floor in his room. After the wide open space of the cleaned entryway, the clutter and destruction of his bedroom made him feel claustrophobic and trapped. He kicked irritably at the debris, scratched at his shoulders and his arms, where the dust made him itch. His side burned badly, and he imagined that he could _feel_ the silver eating his skin, piece by tiny piece.

“What’s wrong?” Clint asked impatiently from the nightstand. Beast had caught him in the hall on his way back to the room and tossed him onto the bed.

“Didn’t you hear me?! He wants me to eat with him!” Beast snarled, grabbing the shirt and ripping it off in irritation. He got caught in one arm and flailed wildly to get it off, growling and snapping until it flew free and landed on top of the wardrobe. The wardrobe sniffed distastefully and collected the shirt, tucking it away.

“Why is that a problem?” Clint asked once Beast stopped gnashing his teeth.

“He wants me to eat with him. In the kitchen.” Suddenly unable to take all the clutter, Beast started grabbing handfuls of broken furniture and torn cloth and throwing it toward the far wall. Clint jumped off the table, hopped across the bed, and jumped onto the other nightstand. He watched Beast throwing the discarded splinters of a couch into the pile for a few seconds, waiting for a lull in the racket.

“So eat with him in the kitchen.”

“Bruce hates me,” Beast snapped.

Clint sighed, giving the impression of rolling his eyes. He put his hands on the curve that equated to hips, reminding Beast of Steve standing tall and perfect on the stairs, scolding the mops like they were a pack of unruly children. “Bruce doesn’t hate you,” Clint told him.

“I make him angry and he catches on fire!” Beast rounded on Clint, holding a broken chair leg in one hand, and a long scrap of tapestried fabric in the other. Clint didn’t back away from him, fearless like all the others, and Beast wished he knew how to make them afraid of him, how to make them understand that he was dangerous and only becoming more dangerous as the days passed, that sometimes it was all he could do to keep from tearing any one of them apart, playing with their shattered bodies in the snow like a dog, and that a day would come when he wouldn’t even feel bad about it.

Clint tilted his candle-topped head and suggested, “Don’t yell at Bruce so much, and he won’t get mad.”

“He doesn’t cook anything right,” Beast argued.

“Then tell him how you want it cooked.”

Frustrated at the mess, the itchy dust he could still feel all over his skin, the burning, chewing, maddening fire of the silver, Beast stopped and roared into the ceiling. “I don’t _want_ it cooked,” he screamed, startling himself and Clint both. He dropped to his knees in the wreckage, breathing hard and fighting back the pressure in his chest, the dread and helplessness. “I’m going to hurt him,” he whimpered.

Clint dropped down from the table and clicked carefully through the mess to Beast’s side. He set one of his candle cups on Beast’s flesh-knee. “Steve is hard to hurt.”

“I hit hard,” Beast responded with a weak laugh.

“Well, he hits just as hard back these days.” Clint shuffled closer to him, cautiously reaching up to brush a dirty lock of Beast’s hair with an unlit candle. “Give him a chance, he’s stronger than you think.”

Beast nodded miserably, pulling out of Clint’s reach. He grabbed the lock of hair and examined it, realizing that he couldn’t remember the last time he bathed. He shaved about every other day, but only because Natasha kept threatening to do it for him, and be believed her. He looked around the destruction of the room, trying to remember when he’d gotten to this point, unable to control himself, smashing anything he could get his hands because he just _hurt so goddamned much_ , and he needed the outlet. He shuddered and stood.

“Ask Tony to heat up a bath,” Beast said finally. “And I’ll wash some clothing.”

“Phil is already working on the clothing,” Clint reported, “He’s got the laundry room whipped up into a frenzy. The whole castle is coming to life. It’s amazing, you should see it.”

Beast didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Why does Coulson let you call him Phil?”

“He saved my life once,” Clint answered. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it someday.”

Despite being only two feet tall and being forced to hop when he walked, Clint still managed to strut out of the room like he had a pair of hips to swing. Beast watched him go and wondered, not for the first time, what Clint looked like as a human and if they’d been friends or rivals. He didn’t ask, and Clint shimmied around the partially open door and disappeared.

~*~

“Stark!” Clint called, hopping into the kitchen. Steve had nicely propped open the door for the mobile members of their team, which Clint was ecstatic over, but it also robbed Tony of one of his few forms of amusement. “Light the fire. The master wants a bath.”

Tony snorted. “Yeah right. He hasn’t bathed in three weeks. And can we think of something other than ‘the master’ to call him, please? How about the Great Dirty Silver Fury?”

“Great Dirty Silver Fury? I’m ashamed of you – you can do better than that. Besides, I already call him silver-moon, and you’re not the one he’s going to crush into little pieces for it. And yes, he does want a bath, so chop-chop before Phil gets down here.” Clint clicked his candle cups together and vaulted onto the counter closest to Bruce. “Can you make the master something really, really, _really_ rare?” he asked quietly

Tony puzzled at the request, but he didn’t pay attention because the truth was that he was ridiculously happy to have a job. With the laundry room running at full steam, Steve running a bath in the morning, and the castle actually getting cleaned, Tony wasn’t sure he’d ever been so busy in his life, and he loved it. And it scared the hell out of him. He stoked the fire hotter in his belly, pumping in water from the underground well, and chastised himself for being so overjoyed to _heat up water_. He was certified genius, ninth in line for the throne, an accomplished smith, and a pioneer in just about every field of science there was a name for – and a few he had to make up. It shouldn’t have filled him with such overwhelming joy to do something so far beneath his skills, but it did. If he had a tail, it would have been wagging hard enough to shake the foundations whenever His Snarly Majesty agreed to a bath, or Coulson decided it was time to clean the kitchen.

He made sure the water was boiling and all the pipes were clear, and then hunkered down and continued working on that power distribution issue for his newest design, keeping the plans carefully in his head. As soon as he had legs and fingers again, he was going to build a powered suit of armor, a metal construct that would increase the user’s strength by fifty times, move faster than a horse at top speed, and be able to batter through solid stone. Maybe one day it would even fly. Of course he needed the curse broken first.

Right on cue, Steve pushed the kitchen door open. Tony still wasn’t sure how he was able to crane his consciousness over to see the door, but he managed it just fine. The captain was covered in sweat and soot, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, shirt clinging to his abs to show every loving detail. Tony watched him cross the room, eyeing his legs and mourning that the shirt was untucked and long enough to cover his ass. He would have loved to tumble Captain Rogers a time or fifty, but it would take someone less observant than even Tony not to realize that the man was head-over-heels for his best friend. And it just so happened that Steve Rogers was someone less observant than even Tony. He still sighed as Steve passed him to the sink and tipped the lever, his metaphorical heart leaping as he happily provided a gush of water at exactly one-hundred-and-one-degrees, perfect bath temperature.

While Steve scrubbed his hands, he looked over his shoulder. “Do you have a screw coming loose again?” he asked.

“What? Why?”

Steve shrugged. “You were making noise.”

Tony felt his entire casing raise half a degree and had to cool himself down. “Just because you move around and I can’t, I’m not allowed to make noise?” he asked, rather than admit the pleasure of hot water rushing through pipes was almost sexual, and honestly better than some of the sex he’d had, maybe even thirty-percent of the sex he’d had.

“I didn’t say that, I was just wondering if you needed something.” Steve turned off the tap and dried his hands on a newly cleaned towel, leaning back against the counter to look at Tony curiously, waiting.

“I’m fine,” Tony said, though he was actually covered in rust, and he could really use a good scraping, because Clint was right – it did itch, and it felt heavy, and it made him less efficient at his job. And he wanted to be touched.

“But you should maybe go get cleaned up before lunch,” he said before he could blurt any of that out. “The ‘master’ is apparently taking a shower, and I understand he’s even going to put on clean clothing.”

Steve blinked at him and then looked down at himself. Panic scrawled across his face, no different than a fourteen year-old girl out on her first chaperoned date. He hastily replaced the towel on the rack and made a run for the door, neatly jumping over Coulson on his way out and racing down the hall. Tony hummed, waiting in stupid anticipation for the taps in Steve’s room to open.

“What did you say to him?” Coulson asked suspiciously, jumping up on the kitchen so they were, what? At eye level? As if any of them had eyes, or levels for them.

“Nothing,” Tony defended. “I just thought he might want to look nice for his date.”

“Don’t put pressure on them,” Natasha interjected, waltzing into the kitchen with a whole flock of teacups following along behind like ducklings. “The last thing we need is performance anxiety.”

“Why is everything always my fault?” Tony asked testily, but he couldn’t get really fired up about it, because the taps opened in Steve’s room, and then, a few minutes later, in the master’s. Tony practically vibrated with pleasure over it, already pumping up more water to replace the loss. He sternly to himself to get a grip and yanked his mind back to the suit, barely even listening when Clint noted that more things were his fault than Tony’s because, really, yeah, that didn’t even need a response.

~*~

Steve hurried through a deliciously hot bath and into clean clothes. The shirt was too small by several sizes, clinging to his chest and stomach, pulling across his shoulders, but it was the best the laundry room could come up with on short notice, and better than wearing his riding leathers, or the filthy shirt he’d been cleaning in since somewhere around midnight.

The castle was a bustle of activity as he made his way back to the kitchen. The sky was dark, and the walls were still black with ancient soot, but the castle seemed brighter already just because of the movement. More and more pieces of furniture had come to life throughout the day and it made Steve nervous about the pieces that were broken, and the ones that were shattered to kindling broke his heart. He just sorted them into piles of things he might be able to fix, and things that no one short of a master sorcerer could repair, and hoped that at least some of them were just normal household items.

He found Bucky already in the kitchen and his mood lifted immediately. Standing at the table with his back to the door, Bucky looked more like _Bucky;_ his hair was washed and trimmed, and he was dressed in clean, simple clothing. He stood up straighter, a man meant to walk on two legs, and not an animal that could manage it if he wanted to put in the effort. He looked so much like himself that Steve was once again taken by surprise when he couldn’t say Bucky’s name.

He settled for a somewhat awkward, “Hey…there.”

Bucky jumped and spun. “You’re late,” he snapped. Steve startled back in shock at the deep snarl of his voice, the words barely decipherable through the gravel. Bucky’s eyes widened marginally and then narrowed again. He shifted his weight, looked away from Steve, and tensed his shoulders. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Just had to get cleaned up,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice casual, as if it wasn’t breaking his heart to see his best friend struggle to talk to him. They’d grown up together from babes, one never far from the other, to the point that their moms had worried about them never fighting, and Bucky’s dad had once tried to have an awkward talk about how boys kissed sometimes, and it was alright if they wanted to, just not to do it in the house. They never had, but touching had never been difficult between them, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, wrestling in the yard, Steve leaning on Bucky after a fight. They’d sometimes gone hours _not_ talking to each other because they didn’t have to, and only once because they’d fought.

Steve cleared his throat, pushing all that away and summoning a smile. “What’s for lunch, Bruce?” he asked to break the tension. Bucky relaxed marginally, letting out a slow breath.

“Beef steak, a spiced sauce, potatoes, and seasoned greens,” Bruce answered proudly.

His oven doors popped open and Steve leaned down to look in at the impressive spread. It wasn’t typical lunch fare, but Steve wasn’t going to say no to a steak, and Bruce sounded so pleased with it. He found quilted potholders next to the stove and reached in for the plates.

“The master’s is on your left,” Bruce added in an undertone.

Steve noticed that the steak was still swimming in bloody juices, but he didn’t say anything as he set the plate down in front of one chair, and passed behind Bucky to the other. Bucky waited to sit until Steve was settled, and then grabbed the steak in both hands and lifted it. He froze with the dripping cut of meat halfway to his mouth, flickering his strange green eyes at Steve in mingled frustration and embarrassment. He set the steak down and looked around helplessly for a towel. Not finding one, he picked up the knife and fork with his slick hands, wincing as the fork clanged against his metal hand. He struggled to get them into the right position to cut the steak, growing quickly and obviously frustrated.

Steve watched his best friend fight with something that should have come natural to him and it was all he could do to hold back the pressure pushing at the back of his eyes. Taking a slow breath, Steve set down his own cutlery and picked up the steak with his fingers. Bucky’s eyes sharpened on him, narrowing in curious suspicion as he watched Steve tear off a bite. It was cooked perfectly, seasoned exactly right, a fine balance between salty and spicy.

He chewed and swallowed with his eyes closed and then said, “This is amazing, thanks, Bruce.” Looking over at Bucky with the steak still held between his hands, he added, “My mom would kill us if she caught us eating like this.” He laughed in genuine pleasure as he tore off another bite. There was something freeing and naughty about eating with his hands, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. Not likely to get a place in the guard or in anything physically demanding, Steve was pushed into academics instead, and his mother had pressed manners to an extent that got him teased in school. He almost expected her shade to materialize just to smack him on the back of the head.

Bucky watched him intently for two more bites. Only after Steve scooped up three fingers of mashed potatoes did Bucky set the silverware down pick his food back up. They didn’t talk, and it wasn’t the companionable silence that Steve expected from a meal with his best friend, but it was better than the last six months without Bucky there at all.

~*~

A storm came in hard that night, muffling the windows in cotton, but broke late in the afternoon. Steve used the opportunity to grab a shovel, wrap himself in warm furs, and forge out into the new blanket of snow. The drifts hit midway to his knees, and he was soaked to the hips by the time he made it to the stables. He cleared out the area in front of the door enough to get it open.

“Prince Thor?” Steve called, shoving the door open just far enough to slip inside. The stables were warm and well insulated, and, Steve was shocked to find, filled with animals. Thor was easy to pick out, larger than any other animal by a full head at the very least, and the youngest horse looked like she almost stand under his belly.

“Captain, you should remain indoors. The weather promises to get much worse quite soon,” Thor said, leaning down and unlatching his stall door with a length of rope apparently tied there for that express purpose. He clopped out to meet Steve in the middle of the wide corridor between the stalls.

Steve counted nine horses, three cows, two dogs, and dozens of cats perched on every available surface. High up in the rafters, six crows chattered down at him. “Well, that about ruins my plans,” Steve said, putting his fists on his hips and turning a circle.

“What plan was that, Captain?” Thor craned his neck to follow Steve’s gaze.

“I meant to bring you into the entryway, so you’re not out here alone, but, I see you’re not alone after all.” He reached out thoughtlessly and put a hand on Thor’s broad neck, digging his fingers through the thick hair to scratch just behind his jaw. Thor drug one hoof over the floor and knocked his giant head into Steve’s chest, throwing him off balance.

“Fear not,” Thor said, lifting his head with an unexpected air of sweet shyness. “I am in good company, and want for nothing.” Steve couldn’t bring himself to take his hand away from Thor’s warm coat. The prince had always been physically affectionate, but Steve had never known the gentleness, the softness. He couldn’t tell if it was just being away from the court, or if it was the fact that he was a _horse_ , but whatever the reason, Steve liked the change in Thor. He didn’t know that the prince would appreciate knowing he was more likeable as a horse though, so Steve didn’t say anything.

“The weather will hold a while yet,” Thor said, his sides swelling with breath. “Would you walk with me, Captain?”

Steve nodded and together they let the animals out of their enclosures. The cats hopped into the warm bedding as the larger animals left, and the dogs raced out of the stables ahead of them, yipping as they bounded through the snow.

“Do you wish to mount my back, Sir Rogers?” Thor asked politely at the door, tipping his head to focus on Steve.

Choking on a laugh, Steve shook his head. “I think I can walk.”

“The snow is piled high. You may tire,” Thor pressed, ducking his head to exit the stables behind Steve.

“I’ll manage.” Steve kicked his feet through the snow and watched the other horses as they moved away from the stables, stretching their legs and playing in the drifts. The horses ranged dramatically in size, age, and coloring; he put one at maybe four years old, another at perhaps seventeen or eighteen, with varying ages in between, and just about every color he could imagine on a horse.

“As you wish.” Thor tossed his head in an equine shrug, kicking through the snow to clear a path for Steve.

“I’ll tie a line to kitchen door, and I should be able to make it out here most days,” Steve said, gesturing to the castle. The door was only a hundred yards away, and as long as he set down posts to anchor the line, he should be able to make the trip in even the worst storm.

“Thank you, Captain, you are kind, but it is unnecessary.” Thor watched as two of the younger horses frolicked in the snow, his gaze protective and fond. “We are self-sufficient and will be safe through the winter. You may, of course, feel free to visit any time you wish, but do not feel obligated. Food and water is plentiful, and replenishes magically. We are quite safe.”

Steve frowned up at the giant horse. “You seem… content out here, your highness.”

Thor stopped, going inhumanly still. Steve couldn’t remember Thor ever being so still and quiet, and he found it increasingly worrisome. “In truth,” Thor said after a long moment, “I _am_ content.” He made a gesture with his head, his blond mane flying out. “That beautiful specimen is my lady Jane, and no finer companion have I found on two legs.”

Unsure how to answer, Steve watched the chestnut mare turn to nip at the four year-old buckskin prancing around her. Jane was fine boned and small, her coat shimmering as though recently brushed, black mane finely combed. “Does she speak?” Steve asked finally, really meaning _is she actually human_? but feeling that it would be poor manners to ask.

“She speaks the language of the horses,” Thor responded evenly. “It a language of simple elegance, though difficult to translate. It is possible that my interpretation of her name is incorrect, though it suits her well.”

Steve accepted that quietly, running his gaze over the rest of the herd. “You speak the language of the horses? What I wouldn’t give to speak to Hope sometimes, the stubborn beast.” He reached out to stroke Thor’s neck the same way he would with Hope, and stilled when he realized what he was doing. Thor leaned into him imploringly, so Steve continued, trying and failing not to imagine petting the prince in his human form.

Thor chuckled, the sound translating to a nicker as he pawed the ground. “I am a horse, am I not?” he asked, voice filled with amusement, “Why I should I not speak the language of my kind?”

A cold shiver slid down Steve’s spine that had nothing to do with the snow. “You’re a man trapped in the body of a horse,” he corrected firmly.

Oblivious to the irony, Thor answered, “Nay, good captain, am everyday more a horse who may speak as a man.” He looked up at the castle, massive chest swelling, and then expelling a gust of warm air in a cloud of steam. “The others feel it too. I have heard them at times speaking the language of the household, communicating in noises that I cannot understand. Even Anthony Stark has grown quieter as the days pass.”

Steve swallowed hard and folded his arms over his chest to keep the heat in. He thought of Tony and the sounds he made when Steve tightened his bolt, and when he ran hot water. He thought of Natasha blowing whistling steam at the teacups when they started to fight. He thought of Bruce’s words the first night, _Something about it… this curse. We like to be useful. Serve a purpose._

“Do not fret for me, Steven. I have had much time to contemplate the course of my life. It has been one of great chaos and conflict, always seeking the approval of my father, the adoration of my brother, fighting always to prove that I am fit to fill my father’s seat.” He hung his giant head, breath releasing in gusty sighs and horsey snorts. “Here I am without responsibility but to my herd, free in a way I have never before known.” Thor looked up at Steve, eyes at once alien and familiar. “The rage in my breast is calmed, and I harbor no ill will toward my brother.”

Before Steve could answer, one of the older horses made a warning noise, drawing the attention of the rest of the herd. Thor looked over, and then up at the sky. He called out to his fellows, a command as clear and strong as any he’d made on the battleground. The playing horses stopped, turning to him one-by-one, and then the dogs returned in a chorus of yips and barks, driving the cows back into the stable. Steve stood aside for the orderly line of animals to pass back into the barn, amazed to see them filing in so calm and neat. Jane remained until last, sidling up to Thor’s bulk while the others found their beds. Against his massive flank, she looked fragile and delicate. Steve reached out to pet her neck, and she ducked her head shyly, greeting him with a soft nicker.

“She is pleased to be of your acquaintance, Captain,” Thor translated proudly.

“All of that, huh?” Steve ran a firm hand down her neck and patted her shoulder. “You’re beautiful,” he told her, laughing when she tossed her head and then danced away from him. She pranced into the stable, kicking her legs up prettily, her tail held up in a proud flag behind her.

“She is most wondrous,” Thor reported smugly, standing tall, his chest puffing up.

“You’ve found a fine companion,” Steve answered, making himself smile to hide the sinking pit opening beneath his feet. How much longer would his friends last before there was nothing human left of them, before Steve was trapped in a magical castle with silent furniture that could move, a horse who didn’t need him, and an animal he could no longer recognize as his best friend?


	4. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

Sam stood in front of the map with Lady Sif on his left, Loki on his right, and Fandral on the opposite side of the table. They leaned over Steve’s carefully drawn map with search grids outlined and marked with notations – which had been searched, when, and by whom, and those he thought should be revisited.

“Here,” Sam said, setting his finger in the middle of an uneven block bordered by the mountains on one side and the main road on the other, with a stream bisecting it almost exactly in half. “This is where we were searching. The captain and I split up about here—” he dragged his finger through a narrow open in a ravine, “—and we were supposed to meet up again here. I lost Red somewhere in here, I think.” He circled his finger around an area in the approximate center of the grid.

Loki took a stick of chalk and marked the area with three concise hash marks, sliding Sam out of the way. “You said it was early morning when the horse went down? When were you and Captain Rogers supposed to meet?”

“Midday. He would have given me maybe half an hour, and then started searching.” Sam crossed one arm over his chest and braced the opposite elbow on it, putting his chin in his hand. “The snow was pretty thick on the ground, and the terrain is rough. I couldn’t have been walking for more than a few hours at most, and even then I would have been moving slowly with all my gear.”

Nodding, Loki picked up a compass and sketched out a circle around the area Sam indicated, frowning down at it as he straightened up. “This entire region will be likely impassable until the melt in the spring.”

“We can count this area out,” Sam said, taking the charcoal and scribbling through a section of the circle. “If I’d gone that way, the captain would have found me before the horse.”

“Is there no enchantment you might cast, Loki?” Lady Sif asked, looking at the prince with her sharp eyes.

“I have attempted to scry for my brother’s position many times,” Loki answered with a frustrated shrug, “As have my mother and all the court sorcerers. Even Lord Stark deigned come off his throne of ‘science’ to attempt it. None have succeeded.”

“But have you tried to scry for Captain Rogers?” Fandral pressed. “He was lost after the fact. If, as we suspect, a sorcerer is holding the prince and his party captive, is it not possible that the same protections do not apply to the captain as to the others?”

Sam watched Loki’s face shift from consternation to curiosity to something like concern. He couldn’t get a read on the man – as far as anyone in the palace could tell him, Loki hadn’t shown an ounce of affection for his older brother since they hit puberty, yet he’d been nothing but the devoted sibling since Thor disappeared. Sam wanted to believe it was just the call of family in need, but something in his gut twisted when he looked at the younger prince’s face, and Sam had learned to trust his gut.

“I will attempt it,” Loki said finally, his face clearing of all expression. “At the next break in the weather, I will charm a raven if one is amenable, and send it to search. Perhaps there is something there we may see from the air.” His eyes flitted to Lady Sif and she pursed her lips before nodding and turning away.

Sam looked in between Loki and Sif, a nasty suspicion coiling around his chest.

~*~

With only two floors of living space, the cell below, and an attic above, the meadow stronghold was tiny compared to the palace at Asgard, but that didn’t make it a picnic to clean and manage. It was hard to get a headcount, but Steve guessed there were hundreds of animated objects in the castle, not to even mention the possibility that the animals in the stables were all transfigured humans as well. If all of it were Loki’s work, he must have been cursing people for years – maybe even most of his life. Steve sat on a recently dusted window sill and watched a dozen bristly brushes scrub the stone floor, considering the sheer magnitude of power that would have gone into so many permanent transfigurations. He knew next to nothing about magic, but it didn’t sit well with him, the idea that Loki could pour so much effort into it for so long. Had he been that powerful as a five year-old, or even a twelve year-old?

Skirting the edges of the room, Steve left the brushes to their labor. He encountered a pair of footstools fighting over a rug in the entryway and intervened before the struggling rug could be torn apart. The growling footstools raced off at the first crack of his voice, leaving the rug quivering in a heap. Steve knelt next to it.

“Getting picked on, huh?”

Like so many of the household items, the rug didn’t speak, but it expressed an air of agreement as it slowly straightened itself out, revealing a beautiful pattern of interlocking circles and weaving vines. Steve reached out to brush a rip at one corner where the tassel hung by a few frayed threads.

“Would you like me try fixing that?”

The rug promptly rolled into a neat tube and waited patiently for Steve to pick him up. Steve got his arms around him and bucked him up to his shoulder to carry him to the kitchen. He found Natasha holding court on the kitchen counter, surrounded by a dozen jostling tea cups, and two other teapots, while Coulson directed a reorganization of the cupboards. Bruce seemed to be arguing with the cast iron pan, and the tea kettle on one of his burners kept nudging him to turn the heat up. Steve tried to ignore all the activity, set the rug down next to Tony, and dodged around a procession of silver spoons waiting to be scrubbed and polished to retrieve a sewing kit.

Nudging the rug to get him to lay flat, Steve settled himself at Tony’s feet, enjoying the wash of warmth over his shoulders. “Tony?” he asked as he threaded a needle, “I know magic is a sore spot for you, and this is a stupid question, but have you tried to figure out a counter curse?”

Tony made a gurgling, snarling noise that echoed in his belly. “That _is_ a stupid question,” he agreed, “because of course I just love being a fucking boiler so much that I haven’t tried to get us out of here.”

“I said I knew it was a stupid question,” Steve defended, glancing at boiler over his shoulder. “Were you able to find anything at all?”

“I don’t exactly have fingers, Cap,” Tony sulked.

“Is there anything I can do to help you? I have fingers,” Steve pointed out reasonably. “Don’t have an ounce of magic, but I have hands and feet.”

Tony gave off the impression of rolled eyes. “Rub it in.”

Steve stroked a hand over the rug’s edge to soothe it as he slid the needle in and pulled it gently through the braided edge. The rug shuddered faintly, but remained still and quiet. Steve bent to his work and gave Tony time to process the situation. He could hear the faint bubble and hiss of water as Tony thought it over.

“You can help by exploring,” Tony said finally. “This place feels…” he hesitated, the air around him charged as if he were shifting his weight. “It feels _old_. There might be clues around the castle that could help me figure out how the enchantments were laid down. If I had to guess, I would say they will be up high or down low. Or,” he added, “Unhelpfully buried in the walls.”

Steve considered that as he tied off and snipped the threat. “I’ll start with the dungeon and the attic before I move on to tearing down the walls.”

“Probably a good idea,” Tony agreed.

Tugging gently on the tassel to test the stitching, Steve asked, “How’s that?” The carpet shook himself, flipping the tassel around several times before apparently deciding it would suffice. Steve looked up at Tony, mouth open, and stopped. Sitting on his knees in front of the massive boiler, he really felt that he was looking at _Tony_ , and it terrified him, growing used to seeing his friends in these shapes. Shaking his head sharply, he cleared his throat.

“Some of the others have been picking on him. Do you mind if he stays in here with you?”

“Not like I could do anything about it if I did,” Tony muttered, but he sighed when the rug, already lying flat, seemed to droop in disappointment. “Sure thing, kid, make yourself at home.”

He settled in around Tony’s feet and Steve hurried out of the warm kitchen, heart squeezing painfully in chest. He couldn’t get used to seeing them in their current forms, couldn’t get comfortable watching Natasha herd around a bunch of teacups like they were children (and they might actually _be_ children), Clint hopping down the hallway, Bucky looking awkward in clothing and fighting to hold a fork. He needed a plan to get them out as soon as the spring frost made traveling possible.

~*~

Steve couldn’t make himself go back down to the cell, the memory of Sam slumped against the bars and the uncertain terror of not knowing if he made it home safely twisting his stomach whenever he passed the stairs. As he walked the halls, he offered encouragement to the staff cleaning away what looked like decades of dust, and ordered the two footstools separated when he caught them fighting again, sending the blue stool to help in the front parlor, and the green one to the upstairs bedrooms. He watched the green stool sulking off and wasn’t sure if he would peg the two of them as teenagers, or if maybe they were never human at all. Was there any reason they might not be goats?

Sticking his head into one of the larger bedrooms, Steve caught Clint pressed against a chest of drawers with what looked like a makeshift bow precariously braced against one candle cup, the string pulled back with the decorative hook on the opposite ‘elbow.’ He had a padded stick carefully aimed at a feather duster cleaning the bedside table.

“Barton!” Steve snapped, startling both Clint and the feather duster. The arrow flew wide, pinging off a water basin and clattering to the floor.

“Do you know how long it took me to set that up?” Clint demanded shrilly while the feather duster glared and scolded him. She wasn’t using words, but it sounded _almost_ like speech. Irate, the duster dropped off the bedside table and swished across the room. Clint ducked out of her path and made a run for the door, hopping between Steve’s feet.

Steve reached down and scooped him up before he could get too far. “Apologize to the lady,” he demanded, crouching down to hold Clint in front of the duster, who shuddered in obvious rage, feathers fluffing out like an angry goose.

“It wouldn’t have hurt,” Clint protested, pushing on Steve’s hand. The duster swung her handle and smacked him with the beaded cord attached to the top. “Ow! Sorry, sorry, I won’t do it again, promise!”

She didn’t seem satisfied, but Steve added, “I’ll make sure he’s sorry.”

The duster adjusted her feathers with annoyed huff and swished back to the bedside table, where her friends glared down at Clint in such easily recognizable solidarity that Steve almost felt sorry him. But only almost.

“What were you thinking?” he asked, carrying Clint out of the room and down the hall.

Clint stopped struggling and crossed his arms. “At least hold me properly!”

Steve obligingly adjusted his hold so his hand was wrapped around the curve of Clint’s hips, rather than squeezing where his stomach would have been. “You’re not setting a very good example.”

“Just trying to…” Clint made an annoyed noise, “Just trying to make sure I don’t forget that I’m a person.”

“And shooting arrows at young ladies is going to help you remember that you’re a man? We’re going to need to talk about that once you get your legs back. That isn’t how you tell a lady you like her.”

Clint snorted. “That ‘lady’ and her pack have been snobby little bitches to Tasha, and they’ve been ‘dusting’ Phil all day. They had him trapped this morning. I’m not going to stand for that.”

“I guess that wasn’t very nice of them, but you don’t get to shoot them for it,” Steve said uncomfortably, imaging the man he knew Phil Coulson to be being chased by a gang of ladies in poufy dresses. He couldn’t make the image stick, but he could easily picture the clock being cornered and dusted while he glared in silent disapproval.

Making a vaguely non-committal noise, Clint changed the subject. “Did you actually need me for something, or are you just stalking me? Shouldn’t you be chasing the master down?”

“He’s hiding up in his wing, and I don’t think any of us are ready for me to cross that line yet.”

Clint made a frustrated noise, but agreed with a shake of his head. “Where are we going then?”

“Looking for the attic. There must be some clues about this place somewhere, and I could use your help.” Steve started opening doors, building a mental map of the castle and noting which rooms had been cleaned out and which hadn’t.

“You mean you want my light.”

“I could just go get the torch,” Steve offered slyly, glancing down at Clint. He stifled a smile when Clint responded by flaring more brightly, candles held up high.

They found the attic entrance in what Steve initially mistook for a closet at the end of the east wing hallway. A short spiral staircase led up to a trapdoor nearly rusted shut with age and lack of care. He set Clint at his feet, braced himself under it, and shoved as hard as the cramped position would allow. He had to knock his shoulder into it three times, nearly taking it straight off the hinges, and exploded through the opening when the door finally gave. He fell against the lip of the doorway, cut his hand on a splintered board, and cussed when the door fell back down on him. Steve sneezed hard several times and coughed to clear the explosion of dust out his lungs, pushing the door back up and batting at his face with both hands. Below him, Clint flailed in the rush of gray dust, his candles flickering out. Despite not having a mouth, nose, or lungs, he coughed and sputtered. Flicking dust off his candles, he hopped through the opening and lit the candles again.

“You’re scrubbing me down later,” he warned, broadcasting an unhappy expression. He jumped away from the door to give Steve room to climb through.

“Right after I scrub _me_ down,” Steve promised, wiping his hands on his marginally less dusty pant legs and picking Clint back up.

Cobwebs draped the attic in fine gossamer, concealing an echoing space with a vaulted ceiling and exposed beams. Cloth-covered shapes crowded the floor without any apparent sense of organization. Steve took a moment to just analyze the massive task, and then got to work. Near the door, he found a table stacked with silver under a dust cloth, and had Clint light the candles on half a dozen candelabras for more light. He more than half expected them to start coming to life, but they remained still and silent where they were placed. Together, he and Clint started pulling off cloths and finding all the things he would expect to find in an attic – linens, clothing, damaged furniture, curtains, rugs, keepsakes – and a few things that he couldn’t identify – some kind of globe with a half dozen coils sticking out at even angles, and what might have been lamp of some kind, but it had no oil and seemed to have been made out of spoons, among other oddities.

“Hey, Cap, come look at this,” Clint called after nearly an hour of searching with nothing to show for it.

Steve set down a stack of musty linens and picked through the maze of boxes and abandoned cloths to the far side of the attic. Clint stretched to shine his light on a painting in an antique golden frame. Steve crouched down and tipped the painting. She was a pale beauty of wavy brown hair and steel blue eyes, but no one he recognized. The style looked like something from the previous century, and her eyes were unsettlingly realistic. Clint pulled down another cloth to reveal a strong jawed man with the same hyper-realistic eyes. There were dozens of paintings, mostly portraits, but some landscapes of areas he didn’t recognize.

Steve selected several of the landscapes and moved them over to the trap door, and then hesitated over the portraits. The paintings were beautiful, but they unnerved him as well, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to walk past them every morning on the way to breakfast.

“Creepy,” Clint observed, lifting a candle closer to one of the paintings, casting a golden glow over a round-cheeked profile and a pair of dark brown eyes.

“I almost feel guilty leaving them here,” Steve admitted uncomfortably, a shudder rolling down his spine.

“I would never sleep right if these creepy things were staring at me.” Clint shivered, his light flickering madly.

Steve glanced down at him, curious about what sleep must be like for a candelabra, but he didn’t ask. He agreed with a nod, but he cast an uncertain look back at them as he gathered the landscapes and the strange globe to take back downstairs.

~*~

Bucky appeared for dinner several hours later, his hair damp and pulled back into a messy bun, a forest green shirt open at the throat, and a pair of pants that looked like they were made for him. He moved into the room like a cautious animal, peering through the doorway first, and then sliding carefully inside. Steve watched him move in equal parts appreciation and concern. Decades of street fighting made him powerful, but whatever the curse did to him made him liquid. His posture held a certain dangerous grace, raw strength ready to be summoned at any moment, knees loose to move quickly. 

“Hi,” Steve greeted, pulling out a smile. Bucky stopped by the table, looking curiously around the formal dining room. Setting aside that they’d never _had_ a formal dining room, Steve had never seen much use for them, but the staff worked so hard to clean it, and the tableware was excited, so Steve agreed to dinner. Bucky’s eyes flitted quickly over the table, resting briefly on the chair at the end opposite from Steve, on Steve himself, and finally on the place settings – twenty of them, as if they were having guests. He chose the seat to Steve’s left and Steve smiled at him, feeling unexpectedly nervous.

“Whole place is bigger than I thought,” Bucky offered after a tense moment of silence.

Steve made himself relax. “And filled with amazing things. I found a few dozen paintings up in the attic today, and every room I open seems to have more people just waiting to come back to life.”

Looking at him sharply, Bucky asked, “You think they’re all people?”

“Hard to say. I think a few of the footstools might be goats.” He told Bucky about catching them fighting over the rug, and then the clash in the hallway, and Clint using the feather dusters for target practice.

“They shouldn’t be invading his territory,” was Bucky’s only response. He shrugged one shoulder, obviously baffled at why Steve would find this a problem. He perched uneasily in the chair slumping and then straightening as if reminding himself how to sit upright. He jumped when the door opened to admit a rolling cart. Clint, Coulson, and Natasha came in with the tray, and the tray itself set dinner down in front of them. Bucky glared at the greens pilled on the plate and tried to push them off, but Natasha swatted his fingers. He hissed at her.

“Stop being a child,” she responded. “Eat them.” She turned and gave Steve a pointed look in case he had the same complaint.

Steve wisely responded by scooping his fingers through them and taking a bit. “They’re good. Lots of butter, you’ll like them.”

Bucky gave him a suspicious look, but he pulled a leaf out of the pile and cautiously bit off the tip. He didn’t answer, but grunted and grabbed a modest handful of the greens. The room filled quickly with the household staff, creeping in one-by-one to check their handiwork. The blue footstool crouched at Steve’s feet and knocked into his shins until he toed off his shoes and put his feet up. Bucky responded to the green footstool by pulling his feet onto the chair and glaring down at it until it gave up and jostled with its companion for a place at Steve’s feet. A hat rack tried to put a napkin in Bucky’s lap, and Bucky nearly tipped himself out of his chair swiping at it until Coulson sent the hat rack away and quietly chastised Bucky for bad table manners.

“Has Tony figured out that strange globe I brought down before dinner?” Steve asked to interrupt what he could already tell would end in tears if they didn’t stop pushing Bucky to do things that made him uncomfortable. Bucky seemed relieved when the attention turned to Steve and he could pull his chicken apart in peace.

“He’s been muttering something about his workshop since you dropped it off,” Clint said, “And he’s trying to get the teacups to write equations for him, but I think it’s just frustrating him. You might want to test the bath water before you get in tonight.”

Natasha poured him a cup of tea. He thanked her with a smile, and almost didn’t feel weird about it all.

“Maybe I’ll come by later and see if I can help,” Steve mused, watching out of the corner of his eye as Bucky nudged a cup at Natasha until she turned to face him. They stared at each other silently, obviously continuing some long-standing argument.

“Please,” Bucky muttered finally, and she graciously poured the water for him. Coulson and Clint let out almost inaudible sighs of relief that Natasha pretended not to hear. Bucky glared at them and went back to his food.

~*~

“Do you have to go back up?” Steve asked when Beast stood after the tray took their cleared plates away. “I thought you might want to sit in the library with me. It’s been cleared out, and I was going to go through the books.”

Beast looked at the door, longing for the solitude of the wing he’d claimed for his own. He glanced back at the table where Clint, Natasha, and Coulson stood looking at him expectantly, and then around the room at the other items that were shifting in the subtle ways of living things standing still. It was bad enough when he knew that his failure to break the curse meant leaving his companions in this sad limbo alone, but now there was the possibility that the castle was filled with even more human occupants, all of them relying on him. He felt so tired, and the snow outside just made him want to sleep, but Steve looked so hopeful, and they all needed him. He nodded and moved to wipe his greasy hands on his pants, but a withering glare from the samovar stopped him. He bared his teeth at her, but picked up the white cloth napkin and wiped his fingers off.

Steve led him out of the dining room and into the small library down the hall. The room was cozy with a fire already burning, and small enough to make him feel instantly safe. The size and dark colors gave it the feeling of a den. His shoulders unknotted as he closed the door firmly behind him, surprised at how comfortable he felt shutting himself into such a small space with Steve, who was, for all his perfection, an interloper. Beast kicked out of the restrictive shoes Coulson made him wear, and then toed the socks off so he could bury his feet in the carpet as he sank into the chair. Steve left him alone, quietly examining the bookshelves, occasionally running his fingers down the spine of a book, or tilting his head to read it better. He tried to look relaxed, but Beast could see the tension in his shoulders, the slight tilt to his head that let Beast know he was very much aware that he wasn’t alone, that he had his back turned to something dangerous. Beast tried to make the others understand that he was dangerous, but for some reason he couldn’t readily name, he didn’t want Steve to be afraid of him. 

“ _Hyssop_ _’_ _s Tales_!” Steve announced after several minutes of quiet broken only by the crackle of the fire.

Beast blinked up at him, almost asleep in the comfortable leather chair. He lifted a questioning eyebrow, watching the tilt of Steve’s shoulders as he pulled the slender book down and brushed dust off the cover, blowing across the pages. “My mother read them to us on winter evenings.”

Beast’s gaze sharpened, eyes narrowing in on the book. Steve’s expression was soft as he opened the cover and gently turned a few pages, all of the tension washing out of his shoulders as some pleasant memory overrode the present. Beast repeated the sentence to himself several times. _My mother read them to **us** on winter evenings_. He could mean his family, siblings, but Beast knew with a sudden heady certainty that he meant the two of them together. 

“Read them to me.” Beast hadn’t meant for it to be such a sharp order, but here was the first proof he had that he was ever anything other than a monster, that he and Steve did know each other once, that they were friends.

If Steve was put off by Beast’s sharp tone, he didn’t say anything, but the softness to his eyes fled, remembering once more that whoever Beast had been once, he was not the same creature any longer. Beast wished he’d kept his mouth shut and let Steve pretend that they were still friends, that Beast was still human. Holding the book gently in his big hands, he brought it back to the chairs, hesitated on the verge of sitting in the opposite chair, and stood staring down at Beast with a thoughtful expression. He looked at the chair again, drew in a deep breath, and went to his knees instead. Moving slowly and deliberately, every movement loudly telegraphed, Steve turned his back to the monster in the chair and sat down at Beast’s feet. Beast froze, the air seeming to thin as he stared down at Steve’s head, felt the brush of Steve’s hair on his leg. Steve relaxed his chin down, stupidly exposing the back of his neck. Beast bared his teeth automatically, hands tightening on the arms of the chair until they creaked. Steve seemed comfortable there in a way he might not be if he understood how it made Beast feel, a warm, bubbling protectiveness, a sense of ownership.

“You shouldn’t turn your back to me,” Beast growled. “It’s dangerous.”

Steve tilted his head backward, the long curve of his throat glowing gold in the firelight. Beast felt a fine tremor run through him, and he swallowed back a rush of saliva.

“I trust you,” Steve said softly, but he wasn’t that stupid, his voice still shook. Beast could see his pulse in his throat, flickering under the skin.

“You shouldn’t,” Beast growled.

“You’re not going to hurt me.” He said it like an order, voice stronger, expression serenely confident. Their eyes met, Steve’s liquid in the firelight, Beast’s – he knew – would glow in the semi-darkness. Steve watched him for a long moment, waiting to see if he would protest. When Beast didn’t say anything else, he tipped his head back down and started to read.

Disappointingly, none of the tales sounded familiar, but Steve leaned his head back against Beast’s leg in the middle of the third story, and Beast hesitantly reached forward by the end of the tale to run his flesh fingers through Steve’s hair. Steve went still for a second, his confident reading voice stumbling over three words, and then picking back up confidence. He pushed into Beast’s hand, and Beast relaxed, playing with the strands. It was the closest he’d come to being truly calm since waking on the stone floor.

~*~

Unbeknownst to anyone else, Tony threw a tiny little tantrum inside his own space. If he had legs and feet, he would have kicked something. If he had arms and hands, he would have thrown something. Most likely, he would have thrown the weather globe, so it might have been a blessing that he couldn’t move. He glared down at the dusty artifact, absolutely positive that it _was_ a weather globe, albeit an old one. It was a weather globe that looked a whole damn lot like his father’s first prototype- an unmitigated failure, but it lead to several breakthroughs in the scientific understanding of lightning and kinetic energy.

And how in Hel’s cold asshole it ended up in an enchanted castle out in the middle of nowhere, Tony had no idea. There was a teensy little bitty possibility that it wasn’t _actually_ one of his dad’s designs, but the likelihood was so minute that he didn’t even bother to consider it longer than it took him to determine the probability was less than 1%.

“No, just… not like that! Please stop!” Tony snapped, watching in helpless frustration as the gaggle of teacups he was _trying_ to teach to write made a mess. They were having a great time scrawling meaningless lines all over the newly cleaned stone in front of his feet. The cups ignored him and continued scribbling until the rug shuffled out from under the table and shoo’ed them away. He curled up like a snake and moved like he was actually reading the scribblings, and then looked back up at Tony.

“Teacup class not going well over there?” Bruce asked sleepily from his corner of the kitchen.

“Who could have guessed that I would be ill-suited to teaching children?” Tony asked sarcastically, but he would have frowned if he could. Bruce’s doors creaked open in a soft yawn, and then closed. Tony’s awareness of Bruce faded to the low-level hum that meant his friend was asleep. He slept a lot lately, more and more as the days went by. Sometimes it made Tony frantic with fear, feeling that same sleepiness, the allure of just sinking into the hot water and being content with his task, and he hated that Bruce was giving into it so easily. Tony tried to imagine that he had a blackboard inside his head and started writing the equations out himself. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem, but it was hard to think, and he couldn’t hold on to more than a dozen of the equations before he started to forget what he was doing in favor of checking the water levels.

Steve interrupted his quiet panic about the third time through the equation set. He was still damp and faintly flushed from the bath that Tony drew for him an hour before, and Tony almost asked him if he’d enjoyed soaking in it as much as Tony enjoyed heating it up. It wasn’t even flirting, he actually wanted to know.

“I found some paper and pencils in the library,” Steve explained, oblivious to Tony’s silent breakdown. “I know you’ve recruited the teacups into helping you, but I thought I would see if there’s anything I can do. Did you figure out what this thing is?”

“No,” Tony answered automatically. He was pretty sure it was one of dad’s early weather globes, but he couldn’t put his hands on it to test it out, and he couldn’t get the stupid teacups to write out one simple equation so he could determine exactly how much energy it would have taken to open a portal between dad’s workshop and the castle’s attic in order to determine if they could go back the same way. Loki dropped them in the castle through a portal when the sky was throwing a shitfit of epic proportions, and maybe they could use the same method to get back, but he wasn’t sure, he couldn’t test it, he wouldn’t even be able to step through the goddamned portal anyway, because he was _a boiler_. But Steve could go, and bring back dad, and as much as it made the water in his belly turn to acid to even consider it, he could use his dad’s brilliant mind on this one.

“Tony? Can I help?” Steve said with a quiet insistence that suggested he’d repeated himself several times.

“Yes, yeah. What do you know about critical mass and kinetic energy?”

Steve’s resulting silence spoke volumes and Tony had another tiny little tantrum before he settled himself to just talking out loud and letting Steve record the equations and theories for him.

~*~

The Lady Sif sat in a heavy chair against Prince Loki’s Working room. The space was a small interior room with no windows, and only the one exit with a heavy bolt on the inside. While in a trance, a sorcerer was completely vulnerable, his body only an empty shell that continued to breathe, blink, and swallow, but otherwise was entirely devoid of life. It would be an easy task to dispatch a prince deep in a trance, easier than a dagger in the bed or poison in the wine. Sif supposed it might have been a compliment that Loki trusted her to watch over him when she had reason enough to put her dagger through the back of his spine, but it was most likely just arrogance.

Still, there was something charming about Loki when he was vulnerable, all that haughty arrogance wiped off his face, his shoulders relaxed, expression soft. She’d loved him once, or loved the idea of him; mysterious wild child, with a temper like a summer storm, and a tongue as smooth as silk. Young and stupidly flattered by his attention, she let herself think that she could tame him. Foolish. She should have known better, _did_ know better, but she brought him into her bed anyway and paid the price for it.

She tipped her head and watched his lips move in words that no living soul could understand, a secret language that belonged to him and him alone, that he shared only with the ravens. Somewhere outside the castle walls, he reached into the consciousness of a raven, and asked it to grant him the favor of its wings. Ravens were too smart to just grab, so he had to seduce it with that silken tongue of his. A small, triumphant smile touched his thin lips, and what tension remained in his spine flowed out like water. He slumped to the cushions, and Sif stood to lay him flat on his back. It was a tempting to just leave him where he fell, but discomfort in the body could eventually pull the mind back, and they needed this to work.

Settling into her chair, Sif waited for him to return and remembered how the whole mess started. She was on the cusp of sleep when a knock brought her back, not even really a knock as it was the scrape of fingernails on her door. She listened for a second, and then the sound repeated itself, deliberate, but reluctant. Loki nearly fell through the doorway when she opened the door, only her hand on his sternum keeping him off the floor. Sif shoved him back, he hit the wall beside the door, and slumped into the chair there. He looked like he’d shaken hands with Death, completely drained of all color, his eyes wide and terrified as he stared up at her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, words she’d never heard from his lips. “I know that I shouldn’t be here. I know. I’m…” He shuddered and wrapped his hands around himself, curling over his knees and rocking like a child. She hastily pushed a pot under him in case he was about to be sick, but he just shook his head. “I made a mistake. I’m in trouble and I need your help.”

He looked back up at her, pleading, helpless. “I didn’t know where else to go, and I need your help.”

Sif narrowed her eyes at him. “What, by the Names of the Three Goddesses, would make you think that I would help you?”

Loki laughed bitterly, a single, huffed sound. “It’s Thor,” he told her, and then, almost inaudibly, added, “I can’t find him.”

Sif’s heart stopped in her chest, Loki’s eyes went wider yet, and then he _was_ sick, and kept being sick until he could only lean over his knees and shake. Sif brought him a cup of water from the bedside ewer, and then wet a cloth and offered it to him. He swished a mouthful of water and spat it out, and then wiped his face down with a shaking hand and drained the rest of the cup.

The stench of vomit made her stomach queasy, but she tried to ignore it as she crouched down next to him. “What is this about? None of us can find the prince.” If she didn’t know how bitterly jealous he was of his brother, she would have just thought he was upset for Thor’s loss and blaming himself for the failed scrying.

Loki looked up at her again, his face fallen into a mask of devastation and simple acceptance. He turned his eyes away from her. “I cursed him, him and his entire unit,” he confessed, shaking. “I didn’t mean for it… they weren’t supposed to _go_ anywhere, it was just to… I wanted them to learn a lesson, but I was angry and put too much power into it, and they disappeared.” He swallowed hard and put a hand over his mouth. “I can’t find them.”

“Goddess, Loki, you fool!” Sif snapped, mind racing. The prince and his unit had disappeared almost a week before and the mood was just changing from a fond kind of annoyance to real concern. It wasn’t uncommon for Thor to get a quest in his head and take off without telling anyone, but as the days stretched and there was no sign of him or any of his unit, whispers started running the length of the hallways.

“You can turn me in if you want,” Loki said, “I deserve it, but not until he’s back. I wouldn’t ever. I love him, he’s my brother.”

“You’re jealous of him,” Sif corrected with a glare.

“That doesn’t mean I would want him to disappear forever! Not like this, not because I made a _mistake_!”

That’s what it was – he was more upset that he did it by accident than the fact that it happened at all. He might claim to love his brother, but Sif more than anyone knew the acid in his heart, the jealousy that writhed in his stomach. Loki thought himself obscured by Thor, always the favorite son, the golden child, while Loki’s own accomplishments often went unnoticed.

“You have to help me get him back,” Loki pleaded when she didn’t say anything, “And then you can do whatever you must.”

Sif considered him. It was impossible to tell when Loki was being honest, if he ever was honest. He was a master of lies, of manipulation, and could be playing the card of the devastated brother to earn her trust and sympathy, only to stab her in the back as soon as he had what he wanted out of her. _But then_ , that small voice in the back of her head that still remembered how Loki once smiled at her when they were alone, _why would he need to come to me at all? No one suspects anything._

She shook her head sharply. No one suspected anything _yet_.

“Fine,” Sif said, narrowing her eyes, “I will help you. But not for your sake, for Thor’s.”

He winced like he’d been slapped and it made her feel a pang of guilt that she harshly pushed away. “As long as you help,” he answered quietly.

On the floor of the Workroom, months later, Loki breathed as steadily as a man deeply asleep, a man who might not ever wake. Sift remembered the real fright in his eyes, and just hopped she’d put her trust in the right place.

~*~

Loki loved flight. If it weren’t for the very real possibility of being stuck that way, Loki would turn himself into a bird and become a master of the skies. He soared with the raven, fighting against the cold air, instinctively using the wind to his advantage. It was difficult to remind himself that he had a mission, but he kept the bird’s smaller brain on track and flew for the mountains, looking for landmarks that would help direct him to the place on the map. Birds saw the world so differently that it was hard to tell, but Loki had a lot of practice using a bird’s eyes, and thought it likely he was going the right direction.

He passed over trees, deceptive covered in snow, and finally found the stream. It wasn’t a big enough body of water to interrupt his flight, and mostly covered in ice, so he stayed over it and followed it to the north, the mountains looming ever closer on the horizon. He rested when he tired, picked through the bark of the trees for any bugs that might not be hibernating, and found a termite nest in the hollow of one pine that made for a fine feast.

The spell was so subtle, that he almost missed it. It didn’t shout at him, terrify him, or shock him to turn away, he just decided that he wanted to investigate a tree to the east, and was ten minutes off course before it occurred to him that he had no reason to investigate that tree. Tilting his wings, he returned, and as he approached the river once more, remembered the termites and turned back toward them. It was _so_ subtle, in fact, that he almost couldn’t make himself believe it even when he recognize that it was turning him away. He flew higher, too high to be safe, until the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else dissipated. Fighting against the unpredictable currents, he flew over the area, keeping a sharp eye aimed at the ground.

From so high up, the castle looked like a toy. He back winged hard and hovered, debating getting closer. The spell might just turn him around and have him flying back up to the clouds, or it might cast him under its veil and he may never be able to leave again. If the enchantment was strong enough to protect Thor and he others from his scrying, it might be strong enough to prevent him from leaving the raven, or, an equally disastrous scenario, it might fling him out of the raven’s consciousness and spin him out of control, leaving him to wander, lost forever. Loki examined the area as best as he could from the sky, and then turned back to the south and aimed for home. At least he knew where they were now, and he knew that the castle was stationary, not caught on some alternate plane of existence. He would need to examine Samuel Wilson more closely to get an idea of how he entered the veil in the first place, and how he escaped.

Now that he knew where the shield was anchored, he would be able to break it, he was sure. He just wouldn’t be able to do it from home, which meant waiting for spring. He cawed into the air, half frustration and half a bird’s prayer that his idiot brother at least survive the winter.

 

 


	5. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

“You taught the teacups!”

Steve stopped in the hallway outside the kitchen door, surprised by the shrill frustration in Bucky’s voice as it echoed off the stone walls.

“The teacups are obviously smarter,” Tony snarled back, just as frustrated, just as loud, louder and more alive than Steve had heard him in more than a week. “It’s not my fault that you can’t pay attention.”

“You are a bad teacher.”

“Then ask Steve to do it!”

“ _You do it_!” Bucky commanded, a sonorous growl creeping into his words. Steve hesitated at the door, not sure if he wanted to break into the fight. Tony was usually quiet when Bucky was around, as was Bruce, but this sounded like an argument they’d had before.

“I am not your servant! I don’t care that the rest of them treat you like some lordling, I won’t. If you want to learn, stop being so goddamned stubborn, and listen to me!”

Bucky’s response was only an incoherent howl of annoyance and anger, bordering on violence. Steve imagined the kind of damage Bucky’s metal hand could do to even Tony’s thick iron hide, and made up his mind.  He stepped casually into the kitchen as if he hadn’t overhead the argument. The room was stiflingly hot, Tony turning red with the heat, Bucky drenched in sweat. A dozen pieces of chalk were scattered across the floor, the rug was huddled in the corner behind Bruce, all of the cupboards were tightly closed, and most of Bruce’s pots and pans were missing, so Steve guessed they were hiding in the oven. Only the cast iron skillet and the tea kettle were still out, the skillet giving the impression of standing guard, and the tea kettle on the table, facing Bucky like he might intervene on Tony’s behalf.

Steve scooped the kettle up, deposited it back behind the skillet, and started picking up chalk. Bucky crossed his arms over his chest and pretended Steve wasn’t there, glaring hotly at Tony, who seemed to be glaring right back. Giving Bucky space, Steve stepped up to the table and looked down at the floor. Several clumsy letters were traced into the stone, most of them backwards, and a couple were either upside-down, or Bucky had moved from facing Tony to facing the table at some point.

Examining the letters and then looking at Bucky, Steve casually asked, “Were you writing with your right hand?”

Bucky gave him a startled look and Tony’s attention shifted to Steve.

“Did you try it with your left?” Steve continued, ignoring the heat and the hostility in the air, the stench of hot iron and animal sweat.

“No,” Bucky grumbled. “He’s a bad teacher.”

“You’re a bad student!” Tony snapped back defensively.

“Let’s take a break,” Steve suggested, setting the chalk on the counter. He reached out instinctively to take Bucky’s arm, but dropped his hand at the last second.

Bucky looked down at Steve’s hand suspiciously and then tossed a nasty look at Tony, his teeth flashing. Tony responded with a burst of steam that Bucky barely dodged. Steve stepped smoothly in between them when it looked like Bucky might try to attack him, and Tony looked plenty ready to handle the attack. Steve wasn’t sure if the result would be irreparable damage to Tony, or Bucky losing all the flesh on his half his body, but he didn’t want to find out. Bucky stepped back from Steve sharply, shaking with anger and resentment. Bucky was always so careful with him, but Steve was starting to test the limits now, goading him on purpose, intentionally making himself vulnerable, watching Bucky watch him, looking for the moments when the initial animal instinct fled and left _Bucky_ looking at him like a person instead of prey.

The snarl faded from Bucky’s throat, his lips relaxing down over his teeth. He nodded shortly and turned to stalk out of the kitchen.

“You okay?” Steve asked Tony over his shoulder once Bucky was out of the room.

“Yes. Get out of here,” Tony ordered in a short snarl, opening the tap in the sink and gushing out boiling hot water. Steve decided that a retreat might be in everyone’s best interest, and he chased after Bucky before the other man could make it to his sanctuary.

Steve caught up to Bucky at the base of the stairs. “Not that way,” Steve called, as if Bucky weren’t running for his den, “This way, come with me.” He turned away and started down the opposite hall, listening carefully for Bucky’s feet behind him. For a moment, there was silence, nothing, and then the light patter of Bucky’s predatory gait. It made the hair on the back of Steve’s neck stand up to have Bucky behind him, especially like this, dark with anger and moving like a stalking wolf. Steve suppressed the urge to speed up his steps, instead deliberately slowing down. He knew that Bucky could hear his pulse flickering nervously, but this was also a part of Steve’s plan. He couldn’t control that automatic reaction, but he could show Bucky that he wasn’t afraid of it, that he wasn’t afraid of _him_ , that he trusted Bucky’s humanity to keep a hold on the animal inside of him.

Leading him in into the ballroom, Steve finally turned around. Bucky stalked into the room, still angry, still spoiling for a fight. His nostrils flared, eyes narrowed and blazing green in the dim light as he examined the room from end to end. It was a simple space, probably used by the castle’s original occupants for everything from balls to meetings to emergency shelter. A balcony ran around the second story with a set of stairs on either side, tall clerestory windows casting the weak winter light down on the wooden floor. It was probably highly polished once, but time had stripped the luster and the staff hadn’t repaired it yet.

“What is this?” Bucky finally demanded, stopping in the shadow under the eve of one balcony.

Steve didn’t respond with his voice.  He grabbed the hem of his shirt in one hand and pulled it over his head, gooseflesh rising on his skin as the cool air hit him right along with Bucky’s sharp gaze. He had his friend’s attention, as surely as he had it every night in the library, but it wasn’t same. Sitting at Bucky’s feet, Steve felt protected, safe. Standing in the middle of an open space, bare skin on display, he felt _hunted_ , and it felt startlingly good, satisfying in a way he never would have expected.

Bucky slunk around the edge of the room, moving in and out of the shadows, eyes never leaving Steve. Tension hung in the air like a plucked string, making it vibrate and sing.

“You’re foolish with your life,” Bucky observed finally.

Steve shrugged one shoulder. “Life’s no fun if you’re too cautious to live it.”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed, lips pulling down. “I’ll hurt you.”

“I’m harder to hurt than you might think.” Steve held out a hand and twitched his fingers, a mute invitation to engage.

Bucky might not have done it if he wasn’t already so angry. With a snarl, he dropped to all fours and launched himself across the space. Steve had a moment to wish he’d grabbed the shield out of his room, but he hadn’t planned it, and by the time he realized it was a good opportunity, he couldn’t have gone back. They met in a painful clash, Bucky’s weight bearing him down to the rough planks, only Steve’s forearm raised between them keeping Bucky’s teeth away from his throat, his knees on Bucky’s stomach keeping him from crushing Steve into the floor. Bucky clawed at him like a wolf, snarling and snapping, shoving Steve several feet along the floor as he struggled to get enough leverage to break Steve’s hold.

Finally getting a breath in, Steve took a chance and opened his knees. Bucky’s body landed hard against his, but Steve clamped his legs around Bucky’s waist and squeezed tightly, fighting to get one hand free. He punched Bucky’s side hard, sinking a sharp blow into his ribs. Bucky grunted in equal parts surprise and pain, and retaliated by digging his elbows into Steve’s gut, driving the edge of his chin into the pressure point in Steve’s forearm.

The air _woofed_ out of Steve’s lungs, but he just flexed his thighs and hooked his feet together, putting pressure on Bucky’s ribs until Bucky was forced to let go of him. Bucky squirmed and growled, a curse working its way between his teeth as he wedged his hands down and dug his metal thumb into Steve’s inner thigh in exactly the right place to make him see stars. Steve’s vision started to darken and the muscles in his legs released in an effort to escape the blinding pain. Bucky shoved away from him, and rolled onto hands and feet, panting.

“You fight dirty.”

“It’s how I was taught,” Steve gasped, scrambling up to his hands and knees, tensed and waiting for Bucky’s next attack.

“Why do you keep trying to make me kill you?” Bucky demanded, shifting his weight so he was crouched on his toes, fingers barely touching the floor to stabilize himself.

“Because I know you never would. I just need you to realize that.” Steve mirrored the stance, grateful for the reprieve, his inner thigh pulsing hotly with pain while the muscles repaired themselves.

“I’m not the man you knew.”

“You are,” Steve reassured him. “It doesn’t matter what happens to us, you will always be that man to me. I’ll never give up on you.”

It drained the fight right out of him. Bucky flopped onto his ass, legs dropping in front of him, expression crumbling. “You’re so stupid and stubborn.”

Steve gratefully lowered himself to a seated position, quirking a smile at him. “It’s how I was taught,” he repeated. They sat in relative silence for several long minutes, panting for air, sizing each other up. “What were you trying to get Tony to teach you?” Steve asked after Bucky’s breath calmed down to a normal rhythm.

Bucky glared at him. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It might. Try me.”

Giving him a dark look of naked warning, Bucky mumbled, “Reading.”

It was what Steve suspected, but he nearly whooped aloud at the victory of getting Bucky to admit it. “I can help,” he said instead. “We’ll get _Hyssop_ _’_ _s Tales_ out again tonight, and read it together.”

~*~

After breakfast the next morning, Steve lead Bucky back into the ballroom, took off his shirt, stood in the middle of the room, and waited. Bucky circled around him, frowning, not as quick to accept Steve’s invitation when he wasn’t already fired up.

“Have a death wish?” Bucky asked, a note of suspicion making it an honest question.

“That might have been suggested once or twice in the past,” Steve admitted. He rolled his shoulders. “It’s good exercise, and I’m starting to feel stifled with the snow keeping me inside. Spar with me.” He twitched his fingers again, the same invitation from the previous day.

Bucky didn’t immediately attack. He frowned and asked, “What’s sparring?”

“Practice fighting.”

One expressive eyebrow twitched, his expression turning dubious and confused, but he didn’t ask any more questions, circling around to Steve’s left. Steve watched him, noting again the way he moved as if he had no spine, an alluring kind of danger, almost hypnotic. He was so distracting, in fact, that Steve barely avoid the first blow aimed for his face. Bucky dropped into a crouch and drove the second blow at his stomach, moving with him as Steve danced out of his way. They circled again, Steve making himself pay attention. Bucky might move like an animal, but he still fought like a man, strategic strikes aimed for the places that would hurt and incapacitate rather than kill.

Steve stayed on guard, devoting his attention to analyzing the differences between his best friend’s fighting style, and this new hybrid form. He blocked a strike aimed for his throat and took a knee to the gut, retaliating with a series of fast punches meant to drive Bucky off. He swung an athletic kick through the air and Bucky jumped back, putting cautiously space between them, giving Steve a little breathing room. It was easily as fascinating as it was dangerous, being on this side of Bucky’s fists. Bucky taught him to fight when they were kids, but not like this. He was a good teacher, patient, but he was also so careful with Steve, and the last time they’d fought this way was when they were seven and still more-or-less the same size. Steve had been looking forward to sparring with Bucky after Erskine’s experiment, but Bucky disappeared before he got the chance.

Darting back in, Bucky swung an open hand at his face and Steve batted it away, barely getting his opposite arm up to block forearm aiming for his throat, and then down to catch the foot flying up between his legs. Bucky’s right hand came down in a chop on his shoulder and Steve staggered backwards, lightning going off behind his eyes.

“You move well, but you’re clumsy,” Bucky chastised. “You don’t pay attention.”

“So teach me,” Steve challenged. “I’m teaching you to read, it’s only fair.”

Bucky glared at him, shoulders hunching down as he remembered the struggle of the night before, Steve leaning against him to help him sound out the letters in the book of children’s tales. Steve could tell that the words were right there, that Bucky still knew how to read, he just couldn’t remember that he knew how to read. The man looked drained by the time Steve called it a night and went their separate ways.

“I won’t go easy on you,” Bucky warned.

“Never asked you to.” He brought his hands back up, and Bucky straightened to cross the distance between them, putting his hands on Steve’s wrists to adjust the position. His metal hand felt strangely liquid on Steve’s skin, warm, and so smooth it almost felt wet. Steve was quiet as Bucky moved his body, adjusting his posture, centering his weight. In the six months that Steve spent searching for Bucky, he hadn’t gotten much training. He knew enough from the hundreds of brawls he’d gotten himself into over the years to hold his own against anyone in the yard, his newfound raw strength making up for a lack of form.

Steve found it curious that while Bucky didn’t remember learning to read and write, he remembered this, proper fighting forms, how to move, where to hold his weight. He didn’t fight with the simple instinct of the hunt, and he didn’t expect Steve to either. They were both covered in bruises, bloody, and drenched in sweat when they finally separated, but Bucky’s grin was fierce and happy in the morning light, and Steve felt lightheaded with the joy of it.

~*~

Phil’s entire world was the soothing metronome of his own heartbeat. Tick-tick-tick-tick, a measured, steady beat. When he first woke up with the ticking, he thought he might go insane with the sound, but it only a few minutes for it to fade into white noise. It never changed rhythm, never sped up or slowed down, it was permanent, unending order. He was aware of the time constantly without really being _aware_ of it, the same way he would be aware of the movements of his fingers. If he had fingers.

He felt his minute hand hit six and his second hand hit twelve. Without a moment of grogginess, he went from the resting state that he called sleep, to being active. He was on the kitchen table, Clint against his back, the curve of Natasha’s belly snug against his side. He rested that way for twenty-nine seconds, enjoying the awareness of them, the certain knowledge of their existence. Before his minute hand moved again, he set off the alarm. Natasha, already awake and feigning sleep for the same reason Phil did, barely twitched. Clint jumped, both arms going wide, one candle cup clanging against Natasha’s side. She prodded him with one arm and he yawned loudly, stretching.

“There are nicer ways to wake a guy up,” Clint complained sleepily.

“If you were a guy,” Phil responded, very reasonably, “I would maybe find a nicer way. Since you’re a candelabra and I’m a clock, we’re going to stick to the alarm.”

Clint went quiet, and Phil moved away from the comfort of their bodies, rousing the kitchen staff and getting Bruce up. Bruce didn’t respond to him right away, and he was increasingly less responsive in a way that worried Phil.

“He’s going quiet like the others,” Clint observed, shuffling over to stand next to him. Phil looked up at him, and didn’t respond immediately. The truth was that he felt himself going quiet like the others, and he could understand Bruce, of all of them, finding solace in the simplicity of this new life.

“Sometimes I think it would be better,” Phil admitted softly. He felt the wince ripple through Clint’s body, the sudden shift in the air that meant an indrawn breath, a rush of fear, “But then I can’t imagine you being content here, and I can’t imagine me being content with a discontent Clint Barton, so they we are. Wake up, Banner!” He buzzed his alarm again before Clint could reply to his confession. “Steve will be down in ten minutes for breakfast, and then he and the master are probably going to beat the stuffing out of each other again. Get some eggs going.”

Bruce yawned, settling into his foundation. “Alright, alright.” He opened his doors and kicked the pots and pans out, reaching in to take out the cast iron skillet and the tea kettle. A saucepot jumped onto the surface of the stove and cozied up to the skillet, but she just spun around and knocked him off without so much as a warning. The pot clattered to the ground.

“Be nice,” Bruce admonished, nudging her.

“She shouldn’t have to be nice,” Natasha argued. She tapped on the cupboard above her to get the place settings moving. “That saucepot is a menace, and I’m going to dent its belly if it doesn’t leave her alone.”

The skillet turned her attention to Natasha in a distinctly considering way, and then shifted as if looking over Bruce’s shoulder at the saucepot on the floor.

“You’ve got a point,” Natasha conceded. The skillet settled into the heat smugly, rotating over the burner to make sure the heat was evenly dispersed. The saucepot tried to jump back up, but the tea kettle moved casually over to the side and knocked it off again, clattering its lid in an absentminded apology as the pot fell back to the stone floor and finally sulked off.

In his corner, Tony woke with a roar of flames, the pipes clattering as water rushed out. “Cap’s up,” he reported through a yawn.

Phil let the normal morning routine flow over him, watching over the teacups while Natasha prepped the morning brew. She could heat water herself, but the tea kettle got testy when she didn’t let him do it, so she waited while Bruce warmed him up, blending a potent mix of black tea leaves, cardamom, ginger, and fennel. She shook herself to settle the blend, and then turned to give her attention to the tea cups.

“Move along, Clint,” Phil ordered, nudging him off the counter as soon as he saw that Natasha had it covered. He jumped down after him, bounced twice on the stones, and headed for the door. Falling from a height still made his gears twist, but it was also exciting, dropping the equivalent of sixty feet and landing as softly as if he’d jumped off a bed.

Together, they marched up the stairs, meeting Steve at the top.

“Morning Coulson, Clint.”

“Captain,” Phil greeted, no differently than if they passed each other in the halls of Asgard. It was strange understanding that the man was seven times his height, and yet being able to look up at him as easily as if the difference was still only a matter of inches instead of feet. Clint babbled a greeting and Steve politely stepped aside for them to pass before heading down to the kitchen.

“Think he’s making any progress?” Clint asked in an undertone once they were (probably) out of Steve’s earshot.

“I wouldn’t have thought so, with all the fighting,” Phil mused honestly, “I was worried it would just make the master more aggressive, but it seems to be… teaching him discipline, perhaps. He walks upright most of the time these days, have you noticed?”

Clint nodded. “I still can’t say his name. I try every night.”

Phil gave him a sharp look, feeling guilty. He’d given up trying to say the master’s name months ago, and it humbled and shamed him to know that Clint was still fighting so hard. He owed the young agent better, and resolved to start doing the same.

“Give it more time.”

“Bruce is going quiet, Tony is ready to pop the pipes right out of the wall he’s so angry most days, and who knows how Thor is holding up, stuck out there with all the animals. It will be weeks before we can check on him again.”

“If there is a more stubborn man on this planet than Captain Rogers, I haven’t met him,” Phil said finally. “Don’t give up hope.”

For a wonder, the master was already out of bed when they shoved the door open. He’d even made his bed and it made Phil flounder for several seconds, his scheduled disrupted. Recovering, he hopped on to the bed and crossed the soft surface to stand opposite the master’s bedside chair.

“Are you up early, or you just didn’t sleep?” Phil asked. It wouldn’t be the first time they found him in the morning in same position as when they left him the night before. Usually that meant finding him in a corner, snarling like a cornered dog, not calm and quiet in a chair.

The master didn’t respond for several seconds, staring down at his metal left hand, stretching his wrist and watching the light reflect off of it. Phil was just growing worried, when the master turned his piercing green eyes to them.

“I can feel my pulse,” he said nonsensically, and then _smiled_. It wasn’t a flash of teeth to show dominance or aggression, it wasn’t a challenge or a warning. He looked happy, the lines around his eyes and lips relaxed. “I think it was always there,” he continued, “I just never paid attention. Some mornings I wanted to chew it off.”

Phil chose not to respond to that horrifying mental imagine, and instead said, “Of course you have a pulse. You better get dressed and go down for breakfast. Bruce is making eggs and bacon. We passed Steve on the way downstairs, so you best get there before he eats it all.”

“Always did eat as much as someone three times his size,” the master said absently as he pushed himself out of the chair and crossed the room to the wardrobe. Phil exchanged a startled glance with Clint, but neither of them breathed a word about the comment in case it might break whatever spell the master was under. Or climbing out of.

~*~

Steve disappeared after dinner and opened the library door ten minutes later than usual. Beast started guiltily, not willing to admit that he was pacing, concerned about the break in their routine. Steve pretended not to notice, and Beast put down the book on the small table between their chairs. A bright flash of yellow caught his attention and his zeroed in on the basket in Steve’s hand.

Passing within tantalizing inches of Beast, Steve arranged himself in front of the fire and took out a pair of long wooden needles. Beast dropped down next to him, reaching into the basket and pulling out a ball of yellow yarn. He looked up at Steve curiously.

“I found it in one of the bedrooms last week and the laundry room cleaned it up for me. It was a mess, all tangled and dusty, but it’s nice yarn. We could use some color around the castle, and mom always said knitting hands are warm hands.” He looked up at Beast through his ridiculously long lashes. “Do you want to try?”

Beast dropped the yarn and snatched his hands back. He glared down at his metal hand, and then at Steve for forgetting. The silver might move like skin moved, but it was clumsy, not as sensitive to pressure as his right hand. He commonly crushed things without meaning to, or dropped them trying to hold them gently. Small items were especially difficult, tending to slide right off of the smooth surface.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Steve said while he hunted through the basket. He came up with a handful of suede and reached out to take Beast’s left wrist.

Beast growled immediately, not intending to do it, the sound just ripping out of his throat. Steve locked eyes with him, but he didn’t let go of Beast’s wrist. His grip was gentle, thumb resting over the pulse point, and Beast could pull away if he wanted to easily. The growl subsided to something embarrassingly close to a purr, and then he cut it off and looked away.

Holding him gently, Steve worked the soft glove over his fingers. Beast stared at it, watching Steve’s fingers as he laced the glove up his forearm. Steve took his hands away and Beast flexed his fingers in the leather. It bunched around his fingers, giving him tactile feedback to the force of his grip, and when Steve slid one of the thin needles into his partially closed fist, Beast held it just tightly enough to keep it from slipping away.

“Is it magic?” Beast asked, shifting the needle in his hand until he held it comfortably.

Steve shrugged. “Not that I know of.” He handed Beast the other needle, and then set the ball of yellow yarn in his lap, and picked up a ball of blue yarn for himself. “You have really great muscle memory,” Steve explained, “So I think you’ll pick this up quickly.”

He didn’t bother to ask again if Beast wanted to learn, just tugged out the end of his blue yarn and showed Beast how to ‘cast on,’ and where to go from there. The yarn kept falling through his fingers, and he got frustrated when the needle in his left hand didn’t go where he expected it to, but something about the movement was familiar the same way fighting on both feet was familiar when he expected it to be strange. He watched Steve knit a row, his fingers flying, the needles clacking together in a soothing rhythm while a complicated pattern seemed to just fall out of his hands like magic. Beast continued with his own yellow yarn until another dropped stitch made him want to throw the whole thing into the fire.

Setting it slowly aside to keep himself from breaking the needles, he picked up the book instead and opened it to the most recent page. Steve glanced over at him, and his hands slowed.

“Will you read out loud to me?” he asked, making enough of a production of _not_ looking at him, that Beast knew he was paying careful attention to every twitch and breath.

Beast considered the book, and then shifted over so they sat shoulder-to-shoulder, Steve’s bicep brushing against his with each stitch. He cleared his throat and started to read, paying careful attention to the letters and drawing his fingers across the page to keep his place. He liked the way the leather glove felt dragging over the paper, the sound it made, the way it blended with the click-click-slide-click of Steve’s knitting.

~*~

“Do you really think Prince Loki could be behind this?” Pepper hissed in a soft undertone, casting a glance at the closed bedroom door. They were crowded into Steve’s room, Pepper perched on the edge of his bed, Sam leaning on the table with his hands braced behind him, Rhodey in between them and the door, arms crossed over his chest.

“Everyone knows he hates Thor,” Sam said in the same soft-undertone. Surrounded by Steve’s men in the barracks, it was probably the safest place on palace grounds for them to talk, but Loki had more tricks up his sleeve than any court jester, and he was always suspiciously well-informed of palace gossip.

“Hate is maybe too strong a word,” Rhodey put in, but his eyebrows were furrowed together over the bridge of his nose, lips turned down. “Jealous, though, _that_ fits.” 

“We know that the prince and The Avengers went into town,” Sam said, setting his weight more firmly on the table so he could tick points off on his fingers, “But no one actually remembers _for sure_ if they saw them. Everyone we talked to said, _sure, I think they might have been at this pub_ , but ‘this pub’ was a dozen different places. When I talked to those same people again, most of them didn’t even remember where _they_ were that night. Pretty delicate work.”

“That doesn’t mean it was _Loki_ _’s_ work,” Pepper insisted. The truth was that the prince creeped her out, but a lot of magic users did; they seemed to share a certain distracted menace to her, an air of power without a corresponding air of control. _Tony_ had the power and the control, but he didn’t use it, devoted to science and understanding the world as it existed instead of manipulating it to behave the way he wanted. She missed him. If Loki _was_ to blame, she was going to take his testicles out with a melon baller, but she wasn’t going to go on a witch hunt.

“Think about the way he’s been acting,” Sam pressed after a second, “Has he ever been this concerned for _anyone_ , let alone Thor?”

“No,” Pepper admitted, “But his brother has also never disappeared over the winter before either. I wouldn’t have thought Howard was capable of worrying about Tony even if it would save his womanizing ass, but he’s practically driven himself into the grave looking for him.”

Sam shook his head in frustration. “You should have seen the way he looked at Lady Sif. They’re hiding something, and I think – I _know_ it’s got something to do with the disappearance.”

“Loki I can believe,” Rhodey interrupted, “But not Lady Sif. She’s loyal to Prince Thor to a fault, and she hates Loki. I can’t see her helping him, not for anything in the world.”

“What if she’s ensorcelled?”

Rhodey hesitated, but Pepper shook her head. “I would have noticed by now.” She bit her lower lip. “I know you’re worried about Steve… we’re all worried. I would give my right foot to not have to deal with Obadiah Stane for one more minute, believe me, but we don’t have any _proof_.”

“No one remembers seeing Loki anywhere that night. Not one single person remembers seeing him at dinner, in the hall, leaving the palace, anywhere in town. Tell me that’s not strange.”

“It was eight months ago,” Pepper pointed out softly, “I don’t even remember where _I_ was that night.”

Sam looked in between the two of them and finally asked, “What if I’m right? What if I’m right and we’re just sitting on our hands, letting him get rid of his brother so he can take the throne? Don’t we at least owe it to the kingdom to investigate it?”

Pepper let out a slow breath, almost afraid to hope. What if it was Loki and they could prove it? Would that actually help anything at all? Even if knowing didn’t get Thor and The Avengers back, at the very least it would take Loki off the throne, the crown passing instead to Odin’s nephew. Who was no better, and arguably worse. But wasn’t anyone better than someone who would kill their own brother for the throne?

“We have to keep it quiet,” she said finally, straightening her shoulders and meeting their eyes. “If we’re wrong and someone finds out, we might end up in a cell instead.”

“And if we’re right and Loki finds out,” Rhodey added, “We’ll end up disappeared like the others.”

They exchanged unhappy looks and parted ways, Rhodey stepping out first to make sure the coast was clear. The palace rumor mill did not need to get wind of Pepper, Rhodey, and Sam all traipsing out of Captain Roger’s tiny bedroom. Pepper thanked him silently with a hand on his elbow and left the barracks. She passed some of Steve’s Commandos on the way out and just gave them pleasant smiles and nods. Pepper had spent her life as a girl in a boys’ club and she’d found that the easiest way to avoid suspicion and hassle was to hold her chin up and act like there was no question to her right to be there. They returned her greetings and moved about their business without a single backwards glance.

The Stark House was a disaster when she made it back across the city. Stopping in the entryway, she took in the storm that apparently landed inside the walls and felt her right eye start to twitch. Taking in a slow breath, she pasted a smile on her face and went in search of Storm Howard. The worst of the destruction spilled out of the library and Howard’s lab, stopping abruptly at the staircase leading down to Tony’s personal domain. Pepper found Obadiah Stane waiting at the base of the stairs, his bulk rested wearily against the wall, one thick hand covering his face, fingers pressed into his temples.

Hearing her footsteps, Stane looked up and summoned a tight smile for her. “Miss Potts. Excellent timing. Maybe you will have better luck with Howard than I have this morning.”

He angled his body toward her and shrugged his massive shoulders, lips quirking in secret smile, as though they were fellow soldiers on the field of battle, facing off side-by-side against a mutual enemy. Revulsion climbed over Pepper’s skin, making her fingers tingle and her stomach twist. She couldn’t identify what it was about Stane that unsettled her so much – he’d never been anything other than loyal that she knew of, and he’d been friends with Howard since the last Great War. No one had a single concrete negative thing they could say about him, and yet something in the way he smiled slightly lopsided, the gleam in his eyes, the way he put his hands on Howard and Tony just made her want to be sick.

Forcing a smile of her own, Pepper marched past him. She wanted to turn sideways and press herself against the opposite wall, make herself as small as possible, avoid any chance of touching him, but she knew better than to show weakness to a predator like Stane. Keeping her shoulders firm and her gait even, she walked straight through the door, successfully suppressing a shudder when the sleeve of her tunic brushed against his chest. She could feel his breath on her neck and it was all she could do not just drop to her knees and empty her stomach.

“Howard?” she called, easing into the short hallway that separated Tony’s rooms. To her right was Tony’s bedroom, to the left was his library and sitting area, and directly in front was his workshop. She skipped past to the two living rooms and down the short flight of stairs to Tony’s workshop. The clattering sounds from beyond the steel door were so familiar that for a moment she expected to open the door and find Tony bent over one of his tables, prodding at some bit of metal or other.

From behind, Howard resembled his son to a heart stopping degree. Only the spattering of grey in his hair saved her from calling out to Tony when she found Howard slumped in Tony’s stool, poking listlessly at one of Tony’s unfinished creations. She hadn’t the slightest clue what it was supposed to be, but all of Tony’s notes were kept in a secret language, a common practice of sorcerers that Tony learned in school and adapted to his needs. No one but Tony himself and anyone he chose to share his secret language with would be able to read them. Pepper could read them, but they were no more illuminating in a language she understood than in the gibberish they would appear to for anyone else.

For both of their sakes, they kept Pepper’s knowledge a secret.

“Howard, what are you doing in here?” Pepper called out gently. She approached him from the side and put the table in between them so she wouldn’t startle him.

His eyes flickered over to her, and he nudged the device again. “Do you know what this is?” Howard asked, voice thick with alcohol and regret.

Pepper pursed her lips and shook her head. “Not my area of expertise.”

“My son built it,” Howard explained, as if she might not know. “My own son built it, and I don’t… I haven’t the single spark of an idea what it could be. My own son…” His voice trailed off and he pushed the cylinder across the table, his ear pressed to the planks as if it the sound of it might give away some secret.

“Maybe it’s time for bed, Howard,” Pepper suggested finally. She eyed the nearly empty crystal tumbler, just a few drops of amber liquid left inside.

Howard looked up at her with a sudden intensity. “I can’t find it, Peggy,” he said harshly, “We found almost all of them except that one. Why can’t I find it?”

Pepper frowned. “Okay, bed time.”

“Peggy—!” Howard protested, sitting up abruptly and nearly overbalancing on the stool. Pepper reached forward and grabbed his arm to steady him. She planned to never tell Tony that his father was in his workshop, and that might be hard to do if he left a bloodstain on the floor. Knowing Tony’s complicated response to anything his father did, he would probably throw everything away, burn the stones to cleanse them, and start over from scratch.

“My name is Pepper, sir,” she reminded him, easing around the table and tugging him gently to his feet. He staggered against her, still solid despite his advancing age and predilection for excess. She stumbled under his weight, wedged her shoulder under his, and got a good grip on his waist. It felt familiar, exactly the same way she carried Tony back to bed when he went on a bad bender.

“Peggy, but, Peggy,” Howard tried again, slouching into her.

“ _Pepper_ , Howard, you’ve known me for nine years. _Pepper_.”

He looked at her in confusion, brow furrowing, eyes narrowed. He jerked away from her and pointed a finger over her left shoulder. “You’re not Peggy!” he accused.

“I’m Pepper, sir, your son’s assistant, and the house manager.”

Howard’s expression collapsed and his shoulders slumped. “My son. Gods, Anthony…” His breath hitched and he began to sob in weak bursts and gasps.

Pepper still hated the man with an unreasoning passion, but she was grateful when Stane jogged down the stairs and put his big arm around Howard’s shoulder. “Buck up, old man,” Stane said in that same voice he used with Tony, clutched a meaty hand on his shoulder and saying _there_ _’s a good boy_ , like he was some kind of dog. “Tony will make his way back soon,” Stane continued, “He always does eventually.”

Howard leaned against Stane’s shoulder, face tucked into the bigger man’s neck and let Stane lead him back up the stairs. Stane twisted to catch Pepper’s eye and nodded once in gratitude. She flashed her teeth in a smile and nodded in reply.

~*~

It started with Natasha bustling in with tea and deciding not leave. The next night, Clint parked himself at Bucky’s side and held his candles up to provide better light. Three nights later, Coulson showed up with no excuse and settled at Clint’s side. Most nights, Bucky started with the knitting and gave up when he got too frustrated, moving onto the book. Coulson proved himself an apt and patient teacher, gently offering a correction when Bucky mispronounced a word, helping him sound out more complicated words without sounding patronizing.

Steve used the time to relax. It was almost like being home, winter screaming just outside the walls, but his mom and Bucky’s mom knitting side-by-side and chatting in soft tones while their dads puffed on pipes, and either Steve or Bucky read aloud. They only had three precious books between their two households – _Hyssop_ _’s Tales, The Ways of the Woods,_ and _The Eddas_ – and they’d read through them so many times that the stories became background noise. Steve and Bucky used to change the stories and see how long they could get away with it before one of their parents would give them a _look_ to get them back on track. Steve added more books to the collection as he advanced in his studies, but sometimes he would sit next to Bucky in the living room and knit instead of read, or draw by firelight, letting his best friend’s voice wash over him and try not to give it away when Bucky started making up tales.

“I bet if we moved this party to the kitchen, Bruce would make us cookies,” Clint suggested one night.

Steve felt an instant pulse of guilt. Bruce and Tony were stuck in the kitchen, unable to join them even if they wanted to. Steve should have thought of it first, and by the tilt of Bucky’s lips, he was thinking something similar. They packed up their yarn and set the book in the basket, Steve slinging the basket over his elbow and offering his arm to Natasha. She considered him very carefully, but finally stepped into the crook of his arm and let him pick her up. Bucky didn’t bother to ask, snagging Clint around the middle and Coulson by his handle.

Coulson bore the treatment with put-upon good grace, but Clint nosily instructed Bucky on the proper way carry a candelabra until Bucky adjusted his metal grip. He wore the sued glove most of the time as far as Steve could tell, even going so far as to eat with a fork so he didn’t get it dirty. Bucky was naturally left-handed, and it eased Steve’s heart to see him able to use the hand again.

“I promised them cookies!” Clint announced as soon as they made it to the kitchen. They’d picked up a small army of followers as they crossed the castle, including both footstools, a flock of feather dusters, and a dozen ceramic cherubim figurines. Bucky sat in his usual chair and gave them all uncertain looks as they crowded around the table, setting Clint and Coulson down. The rug lifted off the floor immediately and Tony blew a jet of steam at the footstools when they charged at the rug.

“Leave him alone,” Steve chastised warningly. The footstools sulked under the table and shoved their way under Steve and Bucky’s feet.

Clint hopped from the table to the counter and whistled at Bruce. “I promised cookies,” he repeated.

“Sounds like you better get started making cookies,” Bruce responded calmly.

“Bruuuuuuuce,” Clint whined, clicking his candle cups together. When Bruce didn’t give in, Clint hustled a mixing bowl off the shelf and loudly mused, “I wonder where the cayenne pepper is kept…”

“Don’t you dare,” Bruce broke in immediately, his arms lifting away from his body to snatch the mixing bowl off the counter.

“Love you, Bruce!” Clint blew him a kiss and hopped back to the table to get out of his way as a flicker of flame licked out of the oven. Bruce muttered to himself, putting together cookie dough while Steve started to read, Bucky obviously uncomfortable with the audience. Bucky picked up his needles instead and continued working on the lopsided yellow cylinder. Steve didn’t have a clue what it was supposed to be, but Bucky seemed to find the knitting calming, so it didn’t matter what he was making.

“Hey,” Tony said after a moment, recognizing the story, “My butler used to read these to me when I was little.”

“I didn’t know you had a butler,” Clint interrupted accusingly.

“Edwin Jarvis,” Coulson supplied absently, “Ran away with a general’s daughter about ten years ago. It was a big scandal at the time, he left a wife behind. The Starks never replaced him.”

“He did _not_ ‘run away’ with Peggy Carter,” Tony said firmly. “Jarvis wouldn’t have done that. He loved his wife.”

His voice sounded so momentarily young and lost that Steve almost asked him to elaborate. He wished Tony wasn’t a giant hunk of iron, because the man sounded like he could use a hug. He would probably punch Steve in the nose for it, but Steve would do it anyway. Instead, he asked, “Do you want me to start at the beginning?”

“That would be polite,” Tony huffed, but didn’t say anything further.

Steve flipped back to the beginning of the book and started reading. “A long, long time ago, in a land not much different from the one we know…”


	6. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

The castle was quiet, the staff still in their sleep, only the suits of armor awake and prowling the halls. They saluted Beast as he passed and he nodded to them in mute acknowledgement. His right hand twitched at his side sometimes when they saluted, and he could almost remember how to respond. They didn’t expect him to respond, and weren’t upset when he passed them without a word. The kitchen, like the rest of the castle, was quiet, the dishes all tucked into their cupboards, Bruce silent and cold, Coulson, Natasha, and Clint as still as the objects they appeared to be on the table.

Beast grabbed one of the scarred chairs and turned it to face the boiler. He sat down and stared at Tony for several long minutes, his right hand clenching unconsciously at his metal wrist. Most of his upper body was covered in the silver, and it ate at him like a hundred tiny mouths, but it also seemed to eat slower since Steve’s arrival. He wondered if Tony felt any pain, if he felt claustrophobic in his metal skin, if maybe Beast would one day be a suit of armor, stalking the halls at night.

The rug twitched in his sleep, startled awake, and then slid across the floor to Beast’s feet. He nudged against Beast’s toes until he picked his feet up, and then slipped underneath, radiating sleepy contentment when Beast set his feet back down.

“He’s probably just a kid.”

Beast glanced up at Tony. Of course he didn’t move when he woke, but the kitchen filled with a sense of presence, the taste of metal on the back of Beast’s tongue, a scent like old blood. Beast looked down at the rug, curling his toes in the weave and contemplating the likelihood of the rug being a child, or what Tony could mean by _kid_. Tony sometimes Clint _kid_ so it might not be an indicator of age.

“I need your help.” Beast looked back up at him from under the curtain of his hair, left loose around his face.

Tony groaned. “Let’s not try the reading experiment again. That didn’t work out so hot for either of us. Figuratively speaking,” he added with a wry chuckle. His presence contemplated Beast, watching him with sharp attention. “I thought you were working on it with Steve.”

It made Beast’s blood heat whenever Tony said Steve’s name, as if Steve’s name belonged to Beast, as if _Steve_ belonged to Beast. The jealousy made him uncomfortable, but he didn’t really understand why; he was the alpha, Steve _did_ belong to him, just like they all did. It just didn’t seem right that he should feel that way about Steve.

“The reading’s fine. Steve’s a good teacher,” he added just to make a point. The air around the boiler warmed marginally, a few flickers of flame leaping up behind the grate. Beast took a slow breath and reminded himself that he hadn’t come down to pick a fight. “There isn’t long on the curse,” he said finally.

“However could you tell?”

Tony’s voice dripped sarcasm, but Beast chose to take his question at face value. He stood and pulled his shirt over his head. Before Steve, he walked around with as little covering as Natasha and Coulson would let him get away with, but he’d done his best to stay clothed since that first morning with Steve in the castle. Tony made a low whistling sound as Beast turned slowly. The silver wrapped nearly entirely around his waist now and disappeared under the hem of his pants, crawling down his left hip. There was only a thin strip on either side of his spine that was still flesh, and the metal had eaten its way over his ribs, licking at his stomach and chest.

“Look at you, Silver Man,” Tony said, and then repeated it softly to himself, “You’re Silver Man and I’m Iron Man.” He cackled, a sound that came perilously close to mania. “Gods, what a pathetic pair.”

Beast chose to ignore him. He pulled his shirt back on and sat down. “I feel calmer, lately, but it still…” He shook his head, not willing to admit to _Tony_ that the silver still burned, ate him, maddening, constant, tingling pain. “Tell me what to do. With Steve.”

“I could tell you lots of things to do with Steve. You’re going to need to be more specific.”

Shrugging a shoulder, Beast confessed, “Can’t. I don’t know what to do.”

Tony hissed a slow puff of steam, considering how to answer. “Seems like he’s doing most of the work,” he said finally. “You’re letting him drag you around, following where he goes and calling it progress.” Though the iron boiler didn’t move, Tony seemed to shrug. “At least you’re walking upright most days. But why?”

Beast frowned, not sure if Tony was making fun of him – positive that Tony _was_ making fun of him – uncertain of how to respond. “Why what?”

“Why are you doing any of this? Why not just tear around the castle on all fours, run in the forest and hunt down your own prey, snarl and snap and growl at anyone who comes near you?”

“I want to break the curse.” He made an annoyed sound low in his throat, recognized it for a growl and stopped. “Don’t you want to be human again?”

“Sure. But do you want to be human again?”

Beast didn’t remember what it was to be human, or even if he was ever human to begin with. He couldn’t answer the question – he wanted to break the curse so the others would be free, so they would be safe. If not for Clint, for Natasha, or Phil, for the rug at his feet, Bruce silent in his corner, the angry wardrobe, Tony, Thor and his herd… if not for Steve, would Bucky want to break the curse at all? Wasn’t it easier on hands and feet, not struggling to speak?

“I want…” He let out his breath and stared at his hands, one flesh, one silver. One vulnerable, one powerful. One soft, one unyielding. “I want to stay with Steve.”

“Then maybe you should stop making him do all the work, and take some fucking initiative,” Tony suggested, the sudden bite of anger in his voice enough to make Beast rear back from him. “You’re not his goddamned shadow.”

Beast’s breath came hot and loud, a whistling huff with the hint of a growl on every exhale. He narrowed his eyes, fought down the surge of temper, and kept his hands in his lap. “Tell me what to do.” 

“Stand up, and—”

Beast stood.

“No, I don’t mean _actually_ stand up! Sit down. Gods, what’s the matter with you? I meant, stand up on your own, figure out what it means to _you_ to be a person. If you want to be more that his tagalong, you have to make yourself believe that you’re something without him.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Beast protested, shifting uncomfortably in the chair, wanting to be anywhere other than right there, wanting to be out in the snow on all fours, running through the moonlight, wanted to be up in his den where it was safe, wanting to be curled at the foot of Steve’s bed where he could be sure _Steve_ was safe.

“Welcome to the club,” Tony muttered. “Why are you even talking to me about this? Talk to Coulson. He’s got that wise all-knowing thing going on, and you actually like him.”

“You’re honest with me,” Beast answered. “Even if you are an asshole.” 

“Well, we can’t all grovel at your shiny metal feet. Some of us have shiny metal feet of our own to see to.”

Despite himself, Beast felt a smile stretch over his lips. “Will you help me?”

“Do you want to be helped?”

He thought about it, imagined a world where both of his hands were made of flesh, a match to Steve’s, their skin warm where it touched, Steve looking at him without that constant shadow of worry, fear.  Beast nodded. He imagined, too, a world where he never saw Steve again, existing only as a creature of instinct and drive, never having to hold another fork in his life. He imagined, as well, a world where he might be both – free to run on all fours if he wanted, but returning to Steve at the end of the day, seeing his smile light up like sunrise. He realized, imagining it, that it would be a world where Steve’s life wasn’t consumed by hovering over him as much as it would be a life where he wasn’t consumed with being acceptable to Steve.

“Yes, I want it.”

Tony let out another breath of steam, whisper soft and pale white in the cold air. “I’ll do what I can.”

~*~

Beast was still seated in his chair, talking quietly with Tony when Coulson began to stir. As with Tony the evening before, he felt Coulson’s presence in the air before the clock moved at all. He was quiet for several seconds as Natasha woke next to him, and then the tea kettle and the cast iron pan, the icebox, the rug. Coulson shuddered, and then set off a high pitched alarm, startling Clint next to him and bringing Bruce groggily up to the surface.

“Up,” Coulson ordered, shuffling away from Natasha’s side. He froze at Beast’s elbow, staring up at him in startled confusion. “Sir. You’re awake.” He eyed Beast up and down. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Yes.” Beast had slept for several hours before deciding to talk to Tony. He didn’t need much sleep in general, even though the chill in the air and the snow on the ground made him want to just curl up and not wake until spring.

Coulson seemed momentarily at a loss. It was a strange sense from him, as he always seemed to have every second of the day figured out and filed away, prepared for any contingency. Apparently not waking up to find Beast in _his_ bedroom for a change. Coulson recovered after only a few even ticks and turned around.

“Are you awake, Bruce?” he called, jumping onto the counter.

The stove made a sleepy noise that was not exactly an answer so much as it was just the whine of his oven doors creaking open. The cast iron pan nudged Bruce with her handle and he shifted, waking fully. “I’m up,” he muttered, stretching one arm to poke the icebox. The icebox obliged him with a carton of eggs colored in a range from deep brown to soft blue to cream, and a rasher of bacon.

It was the first time Beast had seen the kitchen in its morning routine, and he found it fascinating. The air grew warm as Tony stoked up his fires, the dishes started rolling out of the cupboard, Natasha stood at the counter mixing tea leaves and herbs in her pot, Coulson conducting the whole thing with calm ease.

“Steve’s up,” Tony announced, humming in a kind of happy contentment as the pipes above him trembled to life.

Beast watched him, confused and concerned by the sudden change. When his fire was banked, he was moody, the sense of him simmering with a deep anger, quick to strike out with a sarcastic barb. While his fires crackled and the pipes rushed with water, he was cheerful, almost singing with joy. It was a strange change that Beast had never noticed before, tending to stay away from the kitchen unless Steve was there, and then leaving as soon as the meal, or —lately- the evening story was finished. Filing the reaction away, Beast collected the basket of yarn and needles that Steve had taken to leaving in the cupboard. He pulled on his glove, lacing it with the opposite hand and tightening the cord with his teeth, and then picked up his needles and started a new row.

The knitting was often frustrating, but he also found it soothing, quieting, familiar. It made it easier for him to think with his hands moving, the glove pulling across the back of his hand telling him how tightly he gripped the needle, the yarn scraping over the knuckles of his right hand.

“Since you’ve decided to get up on your own,” Coulson announced over the sizzle of cooking breakfast and the clatter of dishes lining up on the counter, “You can come get your own food.”

Beast’s hands stopped moving and he cast a wary glance at Bruce. Bruce seemed to be giving him the same wary look. He’d nearly burned down the kitchen several times early into the curse, bursting into an enraged inferno while he and Beast fought. After the worst of these arguments led to Beast hastily scooping Clint, Natasha, and Coulson up to get them out of the blaze, they’d silently, mutually agreed to pretend the other didn’t exist.

“You know you’re not actually some kind of mountain meadow lord, right?” Tony asked, breaking into the staring contest. “It’s not our job to wait on you.”

Beast fought back the immediate argument that it was _exactly_ their job to wait on him. He was the one who asked for Tony’s help, and he did understand that they weren’t meant to be servants, but that animal part of him that demanded obedience wanted to lay Tony open for questioning his dominance over them. Beast took in a breath, set the knitting slowly aside, and rose to cross the kitchen. Bruce was tense as he approached, the fire in the oven popping loudly, anxiously. Moving slowly and carefully, he took the serving spoon and cut into the large omelet, portioning half to one plate and half to the other.

“Thank you,” he said with slow deliberation.

Bruce didn’t exactly sag in relief, but the fire died down. “You’re welcome.”

Beast took the plates back to the table and fell into his seat, feeling both strangely exhausted and quite proud of himself. Momentary drama passed, the kitchen picked up its normal activity, Bruce starting another pan of food to handle Steve’s impressive appetite, the tea kettle hopping off the stove to fill Natasha’s pot, and then clattering across the counter to refill himself at the sink.

Steve seemed as startled as Coulson was to find Beast sitting at the table, but he recovered in the space of a breath, greeting him with a smile and a soft hello. Beast nodded back and picked up his fork to cut into the omelet. Steve held his fork in his right hand, but it felt less awkward to Beast to hold it in the left, the glove providing the friction he needed to keep control of it. He was getting better with the silverware and Steve hardly seemed to notice anymore, where his expression might have been no different than if he’d seen an angel dropping from heaven the first time Beast willingly picked up a fork.

Beast’s plate was almost cleared when the tea kettle dropped off Bruce’s surface with a loud clatter and a splash of hot water. It rattled its lid in a blanket apology to the room and hopped across the floor to the cupboard under the sink. Steve leaned out of his chair to follow the kettle’s progress, expression curious. Beast followed his gaze, leaning down so he could see under the table. The kettle nudged the cupboard doors open and clicked its spout to get the attention of the sleeping bristle brushes. They woke reluctantly, filling out of the cupboard one at a time, making pleasant _swish-swish_ noises as the slid across the floor. Pulling ahead of them, the kettle stopped in front of Tony, made a noise of vague disapproval, and jumped to the top of his barrel. Tony’s attention centered on the kettle and the brushes grew abruptly nervous.

“What are you doing?” Tony asked suspiciously, irritation lurking in his tone as the fire in his belly stoked higher.

Ignoring Tony, the kettle splashed a stream of hot water down his side. Tony sputtered angrily, but the tea kettle jumped up once, landing back on Tony’s barrel with a clang that carried the weight of wagging finger and harsh word. Beast expected a blast of steam from the angry boiler and moved his hand so he could knock Steve out of the way if he needed to. Beast was startled when Tony’s fire calmed, his attention turning curious rather than angry. The kettle made a wide gesture to the brushes, and they reluctantly left the relative safety of the kitchen table, hopping up to scrub along Tony’s side. Tony made an involuntary noise of pure, melting pleasure, and the brushes grew quickly bolder.

Beast remembered Clint complaining that the rust itched. He dragged his gaze over Tony’s giant iron body, seeing now that he was completely covered in it. Beast unconsciously rubbed his right hand on his left wrist, wondering if the rust burned as it ate Tony up, if it felt like acid where it touched. Pushing his plate away, Beast stripped off his glove, rose and caught a brush as it jumped to the top of Tony’s grill. Holding it up to the kettle for a splash of water, he set the brush to Tony’s side and scrubbed hard, watching the rust flake off and run down with the water.

Tony made a noise that sounded like a whimper. It was a human sound, rather than a water sound or a fire sound. “ _Gods_ ,” Tony said on a filthy moan, “If I’d known you had hands like this, I would have started calling you master months ago.”

The praise made Beast feel unexpectedly warm. He fought down a telling twitch at the corner of his lips and redoubled his efforts, scrapping at the small area until it was entirely clear of rust before moving on. He looked over his shoulder to see Steve watching them with a soft expression, his lips curled in an almost absent smile, the lines between his brows erased.

Beast hiked an eyebrow at him. “Just gonna sit there?”

Steve startled as if he’d been caught doing something wrong. He finished the last bite of his breakfast and stood hastily. The brushes fought for his attention and he actually pet them all before picking one. Beast rolled his eyes, but it was… sweet the way he treated them all like they were something other than objects, like they had feelings. His hand stilled and he peered at Steve over the curve of Tony’s barrel, realizing for the first time that it was possible Steve didn’t think of him as a monster at all.

The tea kettle clicked at him, a blatant order to get back to work, and Beast showed the kettle his teeth. Unimpressed, it clicked again, splashing water down Tony’s side. Beast sighed, rolled his eyes, and focused his attention on scrubbing, unexpectedly pleased by Tony’s happy, human noises. The kettle stayed on top of Tony’s barrel, scrupulously pointing out any spots they missed and overall looking very pleased with himself.

~*~

After the scene in the kitchen, Steve was confused when Bucky didn’t show up for their usual sparring session. He waited for an hour, running laps around the ballroom, and then went looking for him. Other than his wing, Bucky didn’t have any ‘usual’ places, so Steve ended up searching the entire castle. He caught the feather dusters lying in ambush for Clint, and considered letting them just do it, but he _had_ stopped Clint from shooting them, so it was only fair that he intervene. The lead feather duster gave him a haughty look as he scooped her up gently and set her on the ground.

“I’m sure the attic could use dusting,” he told her when her gaze turned calculating in a distinctly uncomfortable way. Steve had faced down bullies, drunk sailors, and pick-pockets in back alleys, and he was actually nervous by the way she looked at him. Giving him one last considering look, the feather duster turned and swished down the hallway, her gaggle of followers rushing to catch up.

Steve tried to push down his frustration as he finally gave up the search for Bucky. He’d thought they were making progress, and he didn’t know what had happened to send him running, but pushing him wouldn’t help. Yet, at least. Steve closed his eyes and reminded himself that he had patience to spare, that they had plenty of time, spring was still weeks away, and Bucky deserved time by himself if he needed it. When that didn’t help the frustration much at all, he found a room to clean, and threw himself into it.

Dinner came and went with no sign of the master of the castle, and Steve started to grow concern. In the three months that he’d been at the castle, Bucky had never missed dinner with him.

“Don’t do it,” Clint said without prompting as Steve finished his dinner.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t do what you’re thinking about doing. I can see it right behind your eyes, you want to march up to the master’s wing and find out where he’s hiding. Don’t do it, he will not respond well.” Clint’s candles flickered out and he crossed his arms over his chest, giving Steve a steady look. “I mean it.”

“Can you at least tell me if he’s up there?”

“I haven’t seen him all day, and I’m not going to go looking for him if he doesn’t want to be found. Last time he almost de-geared Phil when we corned him.”

Steve jolted in surprise, frowning. They’d told him that Bucky was a mess, more animal than man, but Steve had difficulty believing it and they were making good progress. If anything, Clint’s warning just made him worry more. It had been at least three weeks since the last time Steve caught Bucky crouching to all fours to move, and his vocabulary of animal noises had almost disappeared over the last several days. What could have happened to send him back into hiding?

Mind made up, Steve stood. Coulson hopped down from the table and got between him and the door. “Barton is right. Don’t.”

“What if he’s injured himself?”

“Then he’ll heal. It is not a good idea for you to go up there.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at the clock. “You three go up there.”

“We’re not a threat to his territory. If Tony or Bruce were able to get up the stairs, I would say the same thing to them that I’m saying to you. Stay out of that wing.”

“Stop worrying so much,” Tony added. He felt equal parts irritated and amused when he added, “You’re not his mother.”

“I—”

The door swung open, and Steve closed his mouth. Looking decidedly dusty and tousled, Bucky stopped in the doorway. He took in the scene, eyes flickering between Coulson on the floor, Clint and Natasha on the table, and Steve standing with arms crossed.

“Where have you been all day?” Steve asked. He didn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation, but it felt like one as it poured through his teeth.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed, the green lights flashing dangerously, his upper lip lifting away from his teeth. “You don’t own me,” he growled, voice so low that Steve moved as if to take a step back. He firmed his stance and lowered his shoulders instead, standing tall and firm.

Steve hooked his hands in the front of his belt so they were clearly visible. “I know that. I was just…” He let out a breath, lips pulling into a derisive smile, understanding his own foolishness as he finished, “Worried.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Bucky pointed out, “There’s nothing in this castle that would attack me, and nothing I couldn’t handle if it did.”

Steve nodded. “I know.”

They stood across from each other for several seconds, neither daring to move. Coulson broke the sudden tension with a dismissive snort, his alarm buzzing twice in something like a chuckle. He moved out of the space between them and hopped back onto the table, muttering, “Children,” under his breath. Steve felt his face grow hot when Natasha hummed an agreement.

Bucky glared at them until Steve offered an apology. His attention shifted away from the table to Steve, and finally down to the basket slung over his arm. He considered the basket for a second, and then shoved it at Steve’s chest and passed him to pick up his empty plate.

“Wash your hands first,” Bruce ordered, his voice loud and unexpected from the corner. They all jumped, Bucky almost dropping the plate, which squirmed in his grimy hands. Bucky set it down and the plate gave him a very affronted look, jumping to the counter and rolling for the sink. Bucky followed to wash his hands, looking amused rather than irritated.

Sitting back down, Steve set the basket in his lap and lifted the lid. He found a dozen glass jars tucked into musty linens, a bottle of bright yellow oil, and a wooden plank. Confused, he took the jars out one at a time, wiping away the dust with the scraps of linen. The jars contained an assortment of random items; five brilliant blue stones, clumps of red, gray, and yellow clay, an assortment of dusty gems, a jars full of rocks sorted by color. Holding two of the jars in either hand, he looked up at Bucky in confusion. Bucky ignored him, concentrating on cutting up a game hen, his eyes narrowed as he sawed at the tiny bird.

“What is all of this?” Steve asked finally.

Bucky hiked an eyebrow at him, frowned, and then glared at Tony. “You’re a bad teacher,” he snapped.

“Again,” Tony returned in the same sharp tone, “Not my fault. Seriously, Rogers, what kind of artist are you?”

It hit him like a lightning bolt to the back of the neck and he fumbled the jars in his hands to grab the blue stones. “Is this lapis?” he breathed, hands trembling around the jar. “Gods, it is. Where did you _find it_?”

Satisfied, Bucky shrugged and gave up on cutting the bird apart. He pulled his glove off with his teeth, dropped it in his lap, and picked up the chicken. “He told me to pick up any bright blue rocks.”

Steve twisted in his chair to look back at Tony. “How did you know he would find lapis?” Steve demanded.

“Have you seen some of the crazy shit in this castle?” Tony asked hotly, but he sounded pleased. “I haven’t seen much of it, obviously, but the things that get dragged through here. It’s mind boggling. Did he find gemstones?”

“Yes! This is… there’s a small fortune in this basket. Where did you get the clay?” Steve asked, looking back to Bucky.

“Outside,” Bucky mumbled through a mouthful of chicken, his cheeks faintly pink. He pointedly did not look at Steve, concentrating very hard on pulling meat off the tiny bones.

“You would have had to dig through feet of snow for this.” Steve stared down at the basket, dumbfounded.

Bucky held up his metal hand in mute explanation, wiggling his fingers. Steve had dragged Bucky on probably hundreds of pigment-gathering outings over the years, but he’d rarely been able to afford the things he couldn’t find himself, and never something like lapis. He shook the jar of gemstones, slack with shock over the variety. Most of the stones were not even native to the area, and would have been imported at one point before finding their way to the castle.

“I’m sure Bruce can get you berries or whatever else you want,” Tony added after a moment of silence broken only by Steve picking up and examining each jar and setting it down carefully, the quiet tearing sounds of Bucky staying on his best behavior while he ate with his fingers.

Steve looked between them. “Thank you,” he said earnestly. Tony made a non-committal noise of popping flame and hissing steam, and Bucky said nothing, shifting uncomfortably in the chair. Steve reached out and put two fingers on his hand, waiting until Bucky looked at him to repeat, “Thank you.”

Bucky’s eyes darted away from him, but then returned. He ducked his head in a brief nod. “You’re welcome.” He tore a bite off the breast of the small bird. “His idea,” he added in an undertone.

“And I’m not a bad teacher,” Tony put in smugly.

“Being smart doesn’t make you a good teacher,” Bucky told him, but Tony didn’t seem to take offense to it. Steve sat between them, confused at the change in their relationship, uncertain of what to think about it, but the tension in his shoulders seemed to unknot for the first time in months.

~*~

Steve sat on the floor with a heavy slab of marble between his knees, pulverizing bits of green stone with a chunk of granite. He hadn’t milled pigments since before the procedure, and was delighted to find that while it was easier, it still made his shoulders and arms burn. The repetitive motion, the sound of the stone grinding over increasingly fine pebbles was meditative, and he didn’t realize how much he’d missed it.

A flash of movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see Bucky holding his fourth yellow tube up for inspection. The first three hadn’t met whatever standard he was holding them to, but he seemed pleased with the final result.

“Okay, I give up,” Clint said from the table, interrupted Coulson’s reading, “What the heck _are those_? You’ve made a million of them, and they don’t even make sense.”

Bucky’s expression turned wicked. Steve straightened up in alarm as Bucky made a fast grab for Clint. Startled, the candelabra fell backwards and rolled off the table. He scrambled quickly out of the way as Bucky reached for him again.

“I’m sorry!” Clint shouted, dodging him again and darting around Tony’s bulk to put distance between them. “They’re beautiful yellow tube things, really!”

Steve opened his mouth to intervene, but stopped. Bucky was grinning in genuine pleasure, his body loose and relaxed, nothing about his body language threatening. Steve sat back instead to watch the scene play out, a smile tugging at his lips. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Bucky managed to worm his way between Tony and the wall, holding the yellow tube up with one hand and scrabbling for Clint with the other.

“Mind the hardware!” Tony said around a laugh. Steve wondered if he was ticklish, and remembered Natasha going still and tense in his hands, as if she was trying not to laugh while he polished her side. It made him wonder how much they could really feel, and, especially for Tony and Bruce, how difficult it must be to be so isolated from touch. He was quickly distracted by Clint swinging himself up to the top of Tony’s tank and then flying across the room. He hit the edge of the table, cursed like he had breath to lose, and scrambled up while Bucky squirmed out from behind Tony’s bulk.

“Save me!” Clint yelled, hiding behind Coulson.

“You shouldn’t have insulted his yellow tube,” Coulson answered, stepping away from him. He dodged neatly out of Bucky’s way, and Clint squeaked, making a leap for the counter and the presumed safety to be found at Natasha’s side. Bucky caught him in midair and went straight to his knees with Clint held firmly in one hand. Clint giggled helplessly, thrashing, even going so far as to flare one candle at Bucky’s face.

Bucky jerked away from him in mild surprise and narrowed his eyes. Steve shifted his weight once more, but Bucky only responded by tickling under Clint’s arms until the candle cups were out of his way. Quick as a flash, he had the yellow tube stretched over Clint’s base and worked up the shaft of his body. Clint went still and Bucky tied the top with a neat bow. He sat back on his heels, pleased, green eyes flickering in delight, and huffed a soft laugh. The smile that broke over his face as Clint looked down at himself was a thing of pure beauty.

Steve sucked in a sharp breath, hit sideways by the force of Bucky’s smile, the flash of his teeth between his lips, the way the corners of his eyes crinkled, his hair hanging around his face in loose waves, making subtle changes to the lines Steve knew so well. He’d seen all of those things before, dozens, hundreds of times before, but somehow when Bucky turned to direct that smile at him, the air left his lungs, his heart stuttered. He couldn’t make himself say a single word.

“Did you make me a _dress_?” Clint asked slowly, standing upright and looking down at himself, holding his arms away from his body.

“You’re the one who keeps complaining that you’re cold.”

Clint stared at him, startled into silence. “It’s.” He fumbled for words, his posture uncertain. “It’s so yellow. And soft.” He crossed his arms over his chest and hugged the knitted material. “And pretty.” He jumped up to the table to show it off to Coulson, preening. Bucky watched his theatrics with a fond look, expression still gloriously open and happy.

Natasha dropped from the counter, marched over to the yarn basket and selected a deep purple. She rolled it between Bucky’s spread knees. “I want scallops on the edges,” she informed him matter-of-factly.

Bucky looked in between her and the yarn, arching an eyebrow.

“And don’t forget the hole for the spout,” she added, and then jumped up onto the table to examine Clint’s new candelabra cozy.

“You’re just jealous,” Clint told her smugly, “Because I got one first.”

“Yes,” Natasha agreed, reaching up with one handle to nudge him into turning a circle.

Catching Steve’s eye, Bucky shrugged, but he looked happy as he retrieve his needles and climbed back into the chair. It took Steve several long seconds to get his breath back, and even longer to return to his milling. The whole world felt suddenly upside-down and he was startled to find that he wasn’t at all as surprised by it as he would have guessed.

 _How did that happen?_ he asked himself.

A voice that sounded a lot like his mother answered, _How could it not?_


	7. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

Thor did not need to look outside to know that spring had finally draped a gentle hand over the land. It was a sense as easy and instinctive as breathing that told him the time had come to open the doors once more. The herd was restless after the long winter with few forays into the fresh air, and he too could feel the call of the melting snow. The door to the back paddock opened inward. Thor nudged the latch off with his nose and took the thick cord in his mouth to pull it open.

Prancing restlessly at his side, Darcy whinnied at the delayed. She darted forward as soon as the door cleared the frame, and was buried in the snow that collapsed immediately on top of her. Thor laughed, the sound a pleasant trembling in his breast, high pitched and joyous. Darcy kicked out of the pile, giving him a dark look. He nudged her rump to get her out of his way and pushed into the accumulated snow, knocking the pile into the paddock. She raced out after him as soon as he had the way clear, bounding through the drifts that remained in the yard, kicking up her feet to express her general annoyance at being kept so long in the stables. Thor let her play, taking his time to investigate the air and make sure all was well beyond the paddock. The castle stood on the horizon, a dark figure of imposing prominence, quiet in the early morning air, but a waft of smoke drifted from the chimney, blowing the alarming scent of searing flesh back to him. He froze for several long seconds, examining the scent and watching carefully for fire.

Thor identified the combination of burning animal flesh and charred wood as normal human smells, nothing unordinary, if unsettling. He stepped out of the way and called to the others. The dogs came through first, yipping in delight. Jane followed after with the others on her tail, Eric bringing up the rear of the procession. Jane moved delicately through the snow, her belly low and swollen with pregnancy. The winter indoors was hard for her, but she glowed with good health, and the very sight of her in the sun made him swell with happiness. He pawed one hoof through the snow, tossing his mane until she reached him. They touched their noses together while the others filed out into the paddock past her.

No longer given the run of the paddock, Darcy pushed through the snow to the gate and nickered at him, throwing her head and prancing anxiously. Thor blew air through his lips, stamping firmly to tell her no. The paddock was safe enough, but there may easily be wolves on the prowl, hungry after the long winter, looking for prey. A young filly mired in snow would make an easy target. She huffed at him, pawing at the gate with a mischievous look, daring him to stop her.

Leaving Jane’s side, Thor charged her, sending her squealing back into the herd. She put Eric in between them and sulked, laying her head on the top of the fence and blowing out a noisy breath. Thor felt no pity. He returned to his lady’s side, and together they watched over the herd while the snow melted from the roof and the sun made the whole world glitter.

~*~

On his way down to the kitchen with a new book and a dozen rusted blades to be cleaned and polished in a basket, Beast paused at the base of the stairs. An unfamiliar sound tickled at his ears and he turned toward the ballroom instead. The sound came again in stops and starts, not quite an animal noise, not a human noise, and somehow distorted. He set his basket down and pressed himself to the wall, edging closer to the ballroom and the strange sounds slowly taking on a kind of rhythm.

He didn’t recognize it as music until he peered around the doorframe to see Steve kneeling on the floor with a strange box on top of a short table. A long horn curved up from the box, the scalloped edges reminding him of Natasha’s dressed, just finished two nights before. She’d deemed the scallops acceptable and suggested that perhaps the next one should be blue. Since Coulson gave him a dirty look when Beast asked if he wanted something of his own, Beast didn’t see the harm in making a new dress after the potholder for the tea kettle.

Steve fiddled with the box, and it let out a flicker of static, followed by a few warbling lines of a song. Beast blinked and straightened up, slipping into the room.

“What is that?”

Not startled at all, Steve looked over his shoulder at Beast. “A gramophone,” he explained with a smile, “I found it up in the attic yesterday and Tony walked me through getting it to work.” The horn emitted a low growl and several clicks. Steve winced. “Mostly.”

Bucky crouched down with him, watching the needle play over a slightly warped black disk. The sound cleared as the disk spun beneath the needle, and it was… pleasant.

“I found a violin, too,” Steve explained, his voice oddly nervous, “But I never learned how to play, so it won’t be much good.”

Beast looked at him curiously. “Could I?” he asked. He’d learned over the months that as long as he phrased the question as a theoretical possibility, most of his companions could give him an equally theoretical answer.

Steve shrugged. “I’m sure you could learn if you wanted to, but you wouldn’t have a teacher.”

Which meant he’d never been able to play in the first place. The song came to a warbling halt, the disc slowing and stopping. Steve lifted the needle away, cranked the handle to make the disc spin again, and carefully set the needle back down. He smiled as it started with a crackle of static and clicks, but resolved quickly into a melody. Steve stood up, brushed his palms off on his thighs and held his hand out.

“Would you dance with me?” he asked, smile turning tight, a fine tremor running through his hand.

Something about it was important. Beast hesitated, leaning back to put his weight on his heels. “I don’t know how.”

“We fight all the time,” Steve said, “It’s mostly the same. Hopefully there will be less blood and broken bones though.”

Beast glanced down at the gramophone, back up at Steve, and carefully reached out to take his hand. Steve pulled him easily to his feet and adjusted the grip of their hands, nestling his thumb against Beast’s. Watching him carefully as if Beast might attack him, Steve took his other wrist and set Beast’s hand on his shoulder. He set his big hand on Beast’s waist, fingers spreading wide to cover most of his low back, thumb resting on his tailbone, and they stood there while the music wound down.

Beast frowned, confused. “This isn’t like fighting,” he said finally.

Steve cleared his throat, his voice coming out deep and slow. “I’ve never actually done this,” he said.

He stepped away and started the music again, coming back to put them in the same position. Beast waited for some indication of what he was supposed to do, not altogether displeased to feel the heat rising off of Steve’s body as they stood close. Steve drew in a slow breath, tugged on Beast’s hand, and took a step backwards. Beast followed him, moving automatically when he moved, naturally matching his pace and the posture of his body. Steve may have never moved like this before, but he owned the space as they circled, hands strong on Beast’s body as he directed them across the floor.

They completed a circle around the floor, the music too fast for how slowly they moved, but Steve relaxed under his hands by the time the music wound down, and then they _did_ move like they were fighting, an easy give-and-take, advance and retreat. Steve’s arms relaxed, drawing Beast closer to his chest, and they continued the gliding-circling-weaving motion to the tuneless _click-click-click_ of the needle ghosting over the disk.

Beast felt Steve’s breath, warm, and slightly unsteady on his face, and realized that he’d stepped into Steve’s chest at some point, his head nearly on Steve’s shoulder. He jerked back, but Steve’s arm tightened around his waist, holding him there, his opposite hand sliding away from Beast’s to settle low on his hips. With nothing else to do with his freed hand, Beast set it on Steve’s shoulder, slid it slowly around to cup the back of his neck in a gesture of pure, biting, brilliant dominance. A soft sound passed his lips when Steve didn’t pull away from him, but curled into him, accepting the hand on the back of his vulnerable neck, setting their foreheads together. It was still not like fighting, but Beast’s pulse jumped and raced as if it were, as if he was in fear of his life. Steve made an echoing noise, tiny and small like a frightened animal, and set their lips together.

A curious heat rushed up Beast’s body, and he shoved forward, his grip tightening, his mouth falling open. He pulled Steve down to him, tongue forcing between his teeth, taking territory, marking Steve, _claiming_ him. Steve made a breathy, helpless noise into his mouth, submitting to the invasion of Beast’s tongue, the pressure of Beast’s hand on the back of neck, the inevitability of their bodies in contact. Warm copper exploded between them, a rich, earthy taste, and Beast sucked at the source, dragging Steve’s lip into his mouth, chewing on the injury to widen it.

The sharp gasp of pain knocked him out of the trance of bloodlust and violence. He pulled away sharply, chest heaving, eyes wide, and was left standing helpless in the middle of the room, paralyzed with sudden fear and indecision. His body sang with the joy of the hunt, the culmination of the hunt, the certain knowledge that he was victorious and his prey waited for him, injured and ready for a killing bite, but his mind screamed with the taste of Steve’s blood on his tongue, the memory of that pained noise, the realization of what he might have done.

Steve put a finger to his bleeding lip, looking just as stunned and uncertain. His scent was heady in the air, dark and rich with desire, but tainted by a sour undertone of fear. Beast took a step back, and another. Steve took a step after him.

Beast fled, dropping to hands and feet at the stairs to put distance between them.

~*~

Steve’s heart pounded so hard it hurt, a sharp ache between his ribs. He pressed his thumb to his bleeding lip, trying to catch up with had just happened and where it went wrong. Bucky was out the door and around the corner before Steve even got past the taste of blood.

“Wait!” he called, and then cursed himself stupid and took off after him.

Clint and Coulson stood between him and the stairs, looking anxious and determined. “Captain, don’t—” Coulson warned, but Steve didn’t even slow down. He vaulted over them and straight up the stairs, catching himself with one hand and using it to propel himself up the last few stairs to the landing. He could hear pursuit behind him, Clint’s heavy hopping and Coulson’s little metal feet on the carpet, but they didn’t have a chance. He darted through the hallway, and veered into the short staircase that would lead him to the forbidden west wing.

The walls were dark with soot and age, left alone by the staff. Claw marks, ragged holes, and deep gouges peppered the hallway. Places were paintings had been were bare stone, slightly lighter than the surrounding wall. Furniture lay in shattered piles at irregular intervals, the suits of armor slumped in pieces, statues lay fallen across the carpet. Steve stepped carefully around the messes, slowing just enough to nudge doors open and determine the rooms were uninhabited. Clint and Coulson called out behind him, racing to catch up. Steve ignored them, leaving the doors open as he explored, picking up speed. A short staircase waited at the end of the hall with a single door at the top, and Steve would bet Bucky was there, but the strategist in him wouldn’t allow for uncleared rooms at his back.

Jumping up the staircase, Steve went straight through the door, slamming it closed behind him.

“What are you doing?”

The room was dark, and the voice issuing from the shadows was dangerous and low, filled with a deep growl, saturated with naked threat. Steve was not immune – his still racing pulse kicked up another notch, flickering in his chest like a trapped hummingbird.

“You ran from me,” Steve replied in the general direction of Bucky’s dark corner.

“I told you never to come here!”

Steve tensed at the crash of something breakable hitting the carpet, but he held his ground, saying nothing. He heard the shifting of weight in the corner, the scrape of broken things moving against one another.

“Get out,” Bucky snarled.

“I won’t.”

Vaulting over the bed, Bucky flew at him. Steve took an instinctive step back, held his hands away from his body to catch Bucky as he came down. It was a repeat of their first fight, Bucky’s weight dragging him to the ground, and Bucky, more animal than man, snapping and biting at his throat. Steve fended him off with his arms, startled at how much stronger Bucky seemed than he had even that morning. Not to fall for the same trick twice, Bucky deftly evaded him when Steve tried to hook his legs around Bucky’s waist. He disengaged with a roar, grabbed Steve’s ankle in one hand and yanked him hard, sending him sliding across the floor to impact with the foot of the bed. Steve pushed off the footboard to get of the way and Bucky came after him, spitting and growling, hands like claws, supple and graceful, and so—

“You’re beautiful,” Steve gasped as Bucky landed on him once more. He hadn’t even meant to say it, the word jumping off his tongue in reaction to the sight of Bucky barely lit from the moon in the window. Bucky wrapped him up in a vicious hold from behind, his chest vibrating with the force of his growl, but he didn’t snap Steve’s neck, didn’t bite into his throat; he held Steve, heaving for breath, radiating anger and confusion.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said after a moment. “I should have given you time, I’m sorry.”

“Apologize for being stupid with your life!” Bucky thundered, “Apologize for letting me so close to you!” His hold tightened until Steve could feel his bones creaking, “Apologize for that!”

“I won’t,” Steve told him through clenched teeth, holding as much of his breath as possible so his chest didn’t collapse under the pressure. “I won’t.”

Shouting in wordless frustration, Bucky shoved him away and backed up until he hit the wall. “Do you want me to kill you?” he asked, voice still crackling with anger, but a note of frustration and unreasoning fear creeping in underneath. “Do you want to die so badly?”

“I’m sorry for surprising you,” Steve said after a moment, “But I’m not sorry I did it. And no, I’m not trying to bait you into killing me.”

“Why did you do that, then? Why would you put yourself in such stupid danger?”

“Because I love you,” Steve confessed, exhausted by the confession, “Because I’ve probably loved you since we were seven and we pretended we were married without knowing what it meant. Because you’re beautiful. And because you would never let anyone hurt me, least of all you.”

Bucky didn’t respond for several long heartbeats. His breath was noisy and rough, tinted with alternating whimpers and growls, the sound an angry, injured animal makes. Steve wanted to put his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and share body heat, put his cheek on the top of Bucky’s head, rock him, make stupid promises. He stayed where he was, conscious that he’d already made too many mistakes with his friend’s personal boundaries, the echo of his confession rattling around in his head.

“You’re blind,” Bucky said finally, sounding easily as tired as Steve felt. “Stupid. Blind.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” Steve answered, weak with relief, “But I’m not blind.” He jerked back from a sudden flurry of motion, Bucky flying past and through a door. Steve heard the crack of a lit match and a glow lit up the room. Bucky stalked back into the bedroom and slammed the candelabra onto the bedside table. He fisted his hands in the neck of his shirt and tore it open, leaving it clinging to his body by the cuffs at his wrist. He ripped the sleeves off, snapped the ties on his pants, kicked out of them, and stood wondrously, gloriously naked in the fire light, chest heaving, eyes burning with their own glow.

“Tell me again that I’m beautiful,” he barked.

Steve climbed to his feet, favoring one ankle twisted during the fall, though he could already feel it healing. He swallowed hard and crossed the space between them, leaving just a few feet to separate their bodies. Bucky trembled under his gaze, not in nervousness or fear, but in raw pain and anger. Steve felt a weight clamp down on his chest as he took in the infection lines marring Bucky’s skin, the boarders between flesh and metal puffy and angry red, obviously painful. Watching Bucky for a reaction, Steve reached out and set one gentle hand on the warm flesh of his right shoulder, feeling the slickness of the metal just brushing his fingertips on the back of Buck’s shoulder blade. He set his other hand on Bucky’s waist, thumb tracing the metal, just a little warmer than his skin. The silver seemed to shift and move beneath his palm, putting off rainbow patterns like oil on water.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve repeated, wrecked by the disbelieving expression on Bucky’s face, the obvious pain. “You’ll always be beautiful to me.”

He moved his hand slowly up Bucky’s neck, thumb under his jaw to nudge his chin up, and made sure he was broadcasting his intentions as he set an open-mouthed kiss to Bucky’s cheek, another at the corner of each eye. Bucky shook hard under his hand, breathing noisily through his mouth.

“I’ll be whatever you want, whatever you need,” Steve promised, “Just don’t leave me again. Please.”

With a gasp like a sob, Bucky covered the step that separated them, his hands bracketing Steve’s throat, strong and dominating, but controlled. Safe. He leaned up the inch that separated their mouths, sealing their lips back together. Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky’s waist and hoisted him up, taking advantage of his height and the strength in his thighs to lift him clear off the ground. Bucky made a startled noise into his mouth, strong legs wrapping around Steve’s hips almost too tight, his hands shifting to balance himself. They fit together like gears, moving instinctively to counter every shift in weight. Steve stood there in the middle of the room with Bucky in his arms, luxuriating in the slick warmth of Bucky’s mouth on his, his solid weight, his scent like molten metal, earth, and musk.

It only occurred to him to move when Bucky started to shift restlessly against him, making frustrated, trapped animal sounds, hands tight on his arms, feet locking together around Steve’s waist. He floundered for several long seconds; he hadn’t thought this far ahead.

“Do something,” Bucky hissed, voice rich with arousal and annoyance in equal measures, “Do something or put me down so I can.”

Steve was irrationally unwilling to let him go, so he just started moving. He ended up stumbling through the open washroom door, trusting Bucky to hold himself up so Steve could put out a hand to feel for the doorframe. The air in the washroom was cooler than the bedroom, and it felt blissful on his overheated skin. Bucky shivered against him, and Steve reached out blindly for the lever on the bathtub, seeking the heat more than anything. The pipes shuddered and hot water gushed out, splashing into the stone tub, the perfect temperature. Steve hooked his thumbs on Bucky’s hips and pushed, urging him to let go.

Bucky growled at him, the sound ending on a whine, but he unlocked his legs and slid gracefully into the tub. Steve stripped while the water splashed around Bucky’s knees, and Bucky slowly sat back to watch him. He occupied the tub like a king in a throne, spread wide to claim the space, the faint glow of light through the open door casting him in molten shades of silver and gold. He looked dangerous, powerful, and so alluring that Steve got lost in the sight of him, hands stilling on his trousers, just staring while the water splashed against the stone.

Giving him a predatory look, Bucky relaxed back further and propped one foot out of the water. He dropped his hand to his cock, hard and curving toward his belly, the water licking at it. Watching Steve with naked possessiveness, he dragged his hand down his length in a strong, efficient stroke. It was teasing as much as it was challenging and Steve met his gaze briefly in the incomplete darkness. His eyes glowed – not merely reflected the light like a cats, but burned, flickered with inner fire. The threat there was real, but so was the desire. Steve got his fingers moving again, unlacing his trousers and letting them drop to the floor. He stepped out them and directly into the tub between Bucky’s legs, reaching back to flick the lever off. The water slowed to a trickle, dripped into the pool with sharp, staccato beats. Steve stood above Bucky and watched Bucky struggle with the change in position, tension creeping into his shoulders, his jaw firming.

Steve stayed that way until Bucky was shaking, breath coming in tiny pants, his hand tight on the base of his erection, but his teeth stayed covered, and he made no noise. Catching the sides of the large tub, Steve lowered himself to his knees between Bucky’s thighs, the water rising over his hips as he sank down. It was a sharp contrast to the temperature of the air, steam lifting from the water’s surface and curling around them like smoke. Setting a hand gently to Bucky’s jaw, Steve shifted forward, brought their mouths back together, and eased his weight to rest between Bucky’s hips. Gasping, Bucky rolled up against him, the angle almost perfect, the water exactly right. He tore his mouth away from Steve’s lips and arched backward, bracing his neck on the ledge, his chest heaving while he fought to breathe. Steve tilted his hips, lodged his knees against either side of the tub and thrust down. Bucky moaned – not a wholly animal sound, and nothing coherent enough to have words, but something that straddled the two vocabularies.

Steve fumbled one hand for the bar of soap on the ledge, working it to a lather between his hands. He pulled Bucky up enough to bring him out of the water and stroked a soapy hand down both of their lengths. Bucky locked his feet together behind Steve’s back, arching up into him, making the loveliest noise. Shuddering, Steve repeated the motion just to hear that sound again, buried his face against Bucky’s neck, sank his teeth into the juncture between neck and shoulder. Bucky came unglued, his hands scrabbling at Steve’s back, nails and metal tips leaving deep scratches that burned like fire as a counterpoint to the pressure building in his gut, thrusting up hard and wild against him. Steve wasn’t sure when Bucky came, or even when he did, so lost in the movement of the water and pitch of Bucky’s voice.

The next moment he was fully aware, Bucky was pliant underneath him, chest heaving, heart beating so fast and hard that Steve could feel it through the water. He collapsed to Bucky’s chest, just barely remembering to turn his head so he didn’t suffocate. He had to tuck his feet up against the ledge of the tub to lay down, and it was immediately uncomfortable, but he wasn’t willing to move.

~*~

Once the water cooled down, they started to stir. Bucky shoved at Steve’s shoulders to get him to move, and Steve slowly got himself upright and climbed out of the tub. His knees and hips throbbed faintly from the odd position, but he couldn’t be upset about it, too loose, and warm, and happy to bother with minor discomfort. He stepped away from the tub so Bucky could climb out, grabbing a fluffy towel for him off the rack. Bucky dried himself perfunctorily and dropped the towel on the floor, walking naked and unselfconsciously out of the room. Steve retrieved the towel to drape over the edge of the tub, grabbed his clothing off the floor, and followed.

Bucky stood next to the bed, looking suddenly restless and tense. Steve stepped forward to put a hand on his back, but Bucky moved easily out of his reach. He gave Steve an uneasy look over his shoulder, left hand balling slowly into a fist, the metal of his silver skin surprisingly quiet.

“You should go.” Bucky’s voice was soft but firm, the muscles in his neck and back pulling tight.

Steve considered him carefully, hands tightening in his bundle of clothing. “Why?”

Bucky was quiet for so long that Steve thought he maybe hadn’t heard the question, but he said, “This is my space.”

It hurt, but Steve thought he understood. For all intents and purposes, the room was Bucky’s den, and regardless of what they’d shared, Steve was in Bucky’s territory, an interloper, invader, a potential rival. Steve resisted a frustrated noise, and he stopped himself from arguing. He wanted to curl up next to Bucky, feel his warmth on the sheets, make messy love in the middle of the night, wake up together. He’d promised to be whatever Bucky needed, and if this was the only time they ever touched, he would have to be okay with that.

“Alright,” Steve said finally. “Alright.”

He didn’t bother to put his pants back on, but he did pull the loose tunic over his head. The hem fell to mid-thigh, enough that he wouldn’t feel naked, and he could always stop and put on the rest once he was out of Bucky’s wing. He draped the rest of his clothing over his arm and debated trying to touch Bucky again. It was the tension that finally decided him against it, the relief there when Steve moved further away from him.

“Good night.” Steve hesitated, but added, “See you for breakfast tomorrow.”

Bucky nodded, saying nothing. Steve waited a beat longer, at a loss for how to interpret Bucky’s behavior, or if would be doing more harm than good by going, how Bucky would react if he asked to stay. He opened his mouth, not sure what he was about to say, but Bucky finally turned and glared at him. He grabbed Steve by the arm and marched him out of the room, giving him a little shove into the hallway.

Just before the door closed, Bucky muttered, “Sleep well,” and clicked it shut before Steve could respond.

Feeling uncertain, Steve hovered outside the door for several minutes before he turned to leave. He saw the glow of Clint’s candles cast on the wall well before he turned and saw the candelabra marching anxiously across the bottom of the stairs.

“There you are— Naked! Gods, Rogers, put some pants on! Do you realize that I have to look _up_ at you? What is _wrong_ with you?”

Steve didn’t stop to put on his pants, too tired and confused to deal with the hassle of the laces. Instead, he reached down and picked Clint up. “There, now you don’t have to look at me.”

“You are _not_ carrying me around when you’re half naked! What if Phil or Natasha saw us? Put me down!” Clint braced his candle cups against Steve’s hand and pushed ineffectually.

“I don’t think this counts as a compromising position,” Steve pointed out. The knot of anxiety in his stomach slowly tightened the further he got away from Bucky’s door, self-doubt battering at his ribs, the memory of Bucky arching and gasping underneath him tempered by the tension in his shoulders, the terror of his voice rumbling out of the darkness.

A cleared throat pulled him up short as he passed a turn and Steve back tracked to see Coulson in the middle of the side hall, somehow firmly expressing fists on hips. “Do you need to be taught how to put on pants, Captain?”

Feeling a little like a naughty child caught out of bed, Steve moved his hand subtly so his pants hung in front of his groin. From Coulson’s cleared voice, Steve guessed that it hadn’t helped much.

“This is not what it looks like,” Clint hastened to reassure the clock, waving his hands.

“Hmm.”

“Don’t tell Natasha,” Clint begged.

Coulson gave them both a long look, and then marched past them toward the stairs, saying nothing.

Clint groaned, twisting in Steve’s hand to glare up at him. “Look what you’ve done.”

“Sorry. I don’t think Natasha is going to be mad. I carry you around all the time,” Steve pointed out, but he did feel strangely guilty. He doubted that Coulson cared as much as he was giving Clint a hard time in general.

“Let me ask you something, Rogers,” Clint said when they started moving again, “Do you think I’m a person?”

Startled, Steve looked down at him. “Of course I do.”

“Okay, so if I were still five-foot-eleven and _looked_ like a person, would you go around picking me up whenever you felt like it?”

Steve froze just outside his door. He hastily went down to one knee and set Clint back on the carpet. “I didn’t think about it that way, I’m sorry.”

Clint shrugged. “It’s alright, and I don’t _mind_ being carried, I’d just appreciate it if you asked every now and then. Especially when you’re half naked. And by the way, want to tell me exactly _why_ you’re coming out of the master’s wing half naked? I totally expected that we’d have to drag your corpse out in the morning.”

Giving him a dry look, Steve muttered, “Thanks.”

“Spill, come on, I want details.” Clint clicked his candle cups together like snapping his fingers. “I have to get my thrills where I can, Cap, and right now, you’re it. So put on some pants, we’ll get you some hot cocoa and me the silver polish, and dish like girls.”

Steve stared at him for several stunned seconds, left stunned in the wake of the sudden change in subject, and then finally said, “Make it ice cream and you’ve got a deal.”

~*~

“I don’t know what to do with him,” Steve confessed. A bowl of ice cream sat on the bedside table, the last few bites slowly melting into a chocolate puddle. He had a blanket spread across his lap, Clint draped over his knees with his head propped up on his candle cups while Steve worked the silver polish into his back.

“If it’s any consolation,” Clint murmured, voice syrupy, “He probably doesn’t know what to do with you either.”

Steve nodded, working the cloth over the curve of his hips. After their conversation in the hall, he was having a hard time _not_ imagining Clint as the leggy archer he knew him to be, laying naked over his lap. “This is something that Coulson would probably call a compromising position, by the way.”

“Screw him,” Clint responded breezily. “He’s being a jerk anyway, so he can just sit downstairs and stew over it.”

Steve considered that, idly rubbing the cloth into the silver polish. “How are you three?” he asked, rubbing the collected polish into Clint’s neck. “I haven’t really asked.”

“In most ways we’re just the same,” Clint said with a shrug, “But in some ways… I can’t touch them. I can, of course, but it’s not the same. I miss Natasha’s hair, and most of the time I’m not sure if it was red, or brown. I can’t remember what Phil’s skin looks like in the sunlight, or the way it feels to be fucked within an inch of my life and have Nat catch me on the way down. The way a bow felt in my hands. Honestly, most days I can’t be completely sure that I _had_ hands.” He slumped over Steve’s knees. “I’m scared we’re going to forget each other, that one day we won’t remember why it’s important for us to sleep side-by-side, or to talk to each other.”

“Red,” Steve said after a thoughtful pause. “Natasha has red hair. You definitely had hands, and you’re going to have them again. This isn’t going to be the end for any of us.”

They fell quiet for a moment, Steve’s mind running in tormented circles while he pressed the polish in under Clint’s arms and rubbed away a spot of rust.

“I was really hoping that the spell would break the first time you kissed, or fucked, or said _I love you_ ,” Clint confessed with a long sigh. “But Loki’s really too much of a bastard to make it that easy.”

Steve agreed with a soft chuckle. “Technically,” he said, because he’d never had anyone but Bucky to talk sex with, and it was an appealing idea, “We haven’t actually gone that far yet.”

“So there’s still hope?” Clint asked through an amused snort. “If I didn’t think there was a chance he might actually hurt you, I’d fetch you a jar of lube and lock you two in a closet together.”

“You’re a real pal, Clint,” Steve drawled, but it felt better to talk about it in terms of _yet_ , to make it light. Talking to Clint made the twisting anxiety in his gut loosen its hold just a little, just enough that he felt like he could breathe, that there might be some hope for tomorrow.

“I know. Can you check my feet? They’re itchy.”

~*~

Pepper waited until she heard the guard’s footsteps turn the corner, and then doubled back and darted into the hallway that lead to the royal quarters. Her heart thundered under her ribs, so loud that she imagined she could hear it echoing off the walls. Loki was down in the courtyard, casting orders around in an authoritative boom as the garrison planned the expedition to find and free Prince Thor. If Sam was right, the expedition would be a waste of time and man power, leaving the city dangerously unprotected with the king all but bedridden, and Joutenheim spoiling for war with an unstable Asgard. If Sam was wrong, it was the best chance she had of getting Tony back alive. She jerked away from the idea that Tony might not _be_ alive after the hard winter, even if he was alive before the snow.

“No one ever won a war with pessimism,” she whispered to herself, the ghost of her mother’s voice drifting through the words. With Loki down in the courtyard, and half the palace staff out with him, it was the best shot she was going to get to snoop around his rooms. They’d been running themselves in useless circles trying to find witness that could pinpoint the location Loki, Thor, or any of The Avengers the night that they disappeared, but nothing had come of it, and Loki would surely get suspicious if they pressed any harder.

Pepper checked surreptitiously behind her to make sure she was still alone. She had a letter in her messenger bag from a ‘secret admirer’ of Loki’s, actually written by Rhodey in his strangely delicate script, just in case she was caught. Seeing the way was clear, she knelt down in front of Loki’s door and pulled a set of lockpicks out of her hair one-by-one. The results of a misspent youth had the door open in the space of a breath, and she quickly shoved the picks back into her hair as she rose.

Closing the door softly behind her, she took her cork-heeled shoes off and dropped them into her bag. Moving barefoot over the plush carpet, she crept into the room. She moved swiftly through the room, looking under and around heavy furniture, checking his desk for false bottoms or backs, fingertips running along decorative trim in search of buttons or levers. She pulled on the wall sconces, checked behind the tapestries, shoved at each of the bookcases to be sure they weren’t concealing doors. She climbed carefully onto the bed to check on top of the canopy, crawled underneath the bed look at the slats beneath. She found a leather-bound book slid sideways between two slats and pressed flat to the bedframe to avoid detection, but stopped before she touched it. Taking a vial out of her bag, she blew a fine pink dust over the area. The dust flashed into white sparks, and Pepper crawled out from under the bed with an amused snort. It was an alarm – if she’d touched it, it would have written her name down in her own blood for Loki to use later as he saw fit, notifying him immediately that she’d been snooping. She didn’t have the tools to break the enchantment, curse her decision to go straight.

Climbing back to her feet, she braced her hands on her hips and stared around the room. There weren’t any other likely places she could check without taking the huge of risk of crawling into the ceiling rafters, and it was a long-shot anyway. Loki was a talented enough sorcerer that he could liquefy a stone, hide any incriminating information behind it, and set a glamor over the missing section of the wall so perfect that it would look, feel, and smell exactly like the real thing, and she didn’t have time to dust the whole room in powder looking for it.

“Damn,” she muttered.

The sound of footsteps made her jump. She froze for only a second, and then darted back to the bed and slid underneath it, being careful to avoid the book. The door slammed open just as she fell still, hitting the wall and bouncing back. A moment later a second pair of boots clomped through, the door closing firmly behind them.

“I have _tried_ ,” Loki snarled. “I can’t see through the veil that protects the castle!”

“If you send our men in their blind…” Came Lady Sif’s voice, low and dangerous.

“We don’t have any _choice_. Even if my idiot brother has survived the winter, they won’t have long on the curse. If it’s not broken…” He paced, his black boots polished to a liquid shine, setting off the emerald green of his trousers.

“You should have thought about that before you cursed them in the first place!” Sif snapped.

“ _I know,_ goddamnit woman! Don’t you think I know that? Why do you think I’ve been draining myself to reserves every night for the past month?! If there is another sorcerer there, as we suspect, then I need to save my strength for the next fortnight, or we will be over before we even reach the castle!”

“It was an accident!”

Pepper didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until Sif and Loki froze, so silent and still that Pepper couldn’t even hear them breathing. She heard the whistle of steel being drawn out of a scabbard. The boots approached her from either side of the bed. Pepper grabbed the foot of the bed, waited until they were both right at the bedside, and pulled with all her strength. She shot out from under the bed just as Sif drove a sword straight through the mattress.

“It’s me, stop!” Pepper shouted, holding her hands over her face. Loki was poised above her with a hand-and-a-half dagger in one hand, his opposite hand glowing green with malevolent energy. Pepper squeezed her eyes shut, but nothing came.

“ _Pepper_?” Sif straddled her where she lay helplessly exposed, putting herself between Pepper and Loki. “What in the name of Hel are you doing?” Sif demanded, looking down at her. Pepper had only known Sif as the rough-and-tumble tomboy with the fantastic smile, and a secret love of lace doilies. She’d never known the Warrior Lady with eyes of flint, her jaw strong, lips tight, every line of her body advertising potential violence.

Rather than answering Sif, she pointed her finger between Sif’s legs at Loki. “You cursed Prince Thor and The Avengers, and left me dealing with Obadiah Stane managing Tony’s estate!”

Either unsure of how to respond or just holding a curse on his tongue, Loki said nothing. Pepper drew her legs up and climbed back to her feet, brushing dust off of her skirt and crossing her arms over her chest. “If this really was a mistake, you are helping us get Tony back, and you better hope he’s still alive, for your sake.”

Sif and Loki exchanged quick glances. Loki raised his hand again and Sif hoisted her blade in a warning gesture. Rolling his eyes, Loki dismissed the gathered energy and glared hard at Pepper. “You’re either very brave or suicidal,” Loki snarled, “Sneaking into my rooms.”

“You should make them harder to get into if you don’t want people sneaking around,” Pepper snapped back. “And I didn’t touch your little curse tome, so don’t even bother checking.”

Loki’s gaze turned assessing. “My, what an interesting skill set you have. And here I thought Stark only kept you around for the space between your thighs.”

Pepper’s temper flared, her face heating up so quickly that she felt dizzy with the rush of blood. Her fists came up, and she darted around Sif to sink one straight into Loki’s gut, putting her shoulder and hips into it like Happy taught her years before. Loki made a noise of surprise and pain, doubling over, gasping for air. Pepper stepped back, flexing her fist. She glanced over at Sif.

“I would have done it for you,” Sif said, unconcerned at Loki’s struggle for breath, “But it looked like you had it handled.” She made a gesture to the table with her head and Pepper followed her to a chair. She sat down, crossed her legs, and retrieved her shoes out of her bag.

“Cute shoes.”

“Mr. Mercer on Skyeguarde Way made them for me – the cork keeps them from making so much noise.” Pepper handed the slipper over, and Sif _hmm_ _’ed_ over it while Loki got himself under control and crawled back to his feet. He crossed the room still bent slightly forward and dropped into a chair.

“I will not forget that, woman.”

“Good,” Pepper snapped back, “Maybe it will stop you from saying something idiotic next time.”

“Doubt it,” Sif muttered, handing the shoe back. She ignored Loki’s dark look and turned her attention to Pepper. “Who is _us_?”


	8. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

Steve pushed his way out the kitchen door with a shovel in hand. He hadn’t seen Bucky in two days, and he was running himself in maddening circles while he tried to stay occupied and give Bucky his space. Shovelling out a path the stables sounded like a pleasant break in routine, and he was worried about Thor – it had been almost a month since he last made it out to the stables, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Jane was pregnant. He had to nudge back a dozen bristle brushes and both footstools to get the door closed again, almost tempted to let them out in the snow, but not sure he would be able to get them back again if he did.

The work was hard, a striking mixture of being overheated from the exertion and chilled by the icy wind. He put his body into it, shovelling out the path like he was building a bridge home, stopping ever few yards to pat down the sides of his pathway so they wouldn’t collapse behind him. The walls of his path ended up reaching his chest in some places, and he probably could have just walked on the surface of the snowpack, but he enjoyed the challenge of breaking the ice and creating a smooth channel.

Steve had buried himself so deep in the work that he almost smacked into the side of the stables before he realized it. Leaning the shovel against the side of the outbuilding, he swiped his sleeve over his damp forehead and wrenched the door open. The hinges squealed unhappily, but he got it open far enough to squeeze inside, briefly regretting all the extra inches packed around his body that made sneaking through tight spaces difficult. Steve stumbled through the opening and his heart froze in his chest. The stable was empty except for the birds. Nightmares of predators making a den of the barn, slaughtering the trapped animals whenever they were hungry made Steve sick to his stomach.

“There are no bones, no blood,” Steve pointed out to himself, forcing his breath to calm, putting one hand on his hip and burying the other in his hair while he looked around helplessly. Could Thor have taken his herd out into the woods, gone wild? But why? Even if he’d completely lost his humanity, he wouldn’t have strayed away from a warm, safe, clean stable with a constant supply of food and fresh water for the uncertainty of the woods in winter.

A nicker finally drew his attention to the very back of the stables. He peered around a partial wall to find a door leading out to a paddock and breathed a massive sigh of relief. The large paddock was a single plane of icy white, horses and cows digging through the last layer in search of whatever greens might have survived the snow. Thor stood at the far end, even more massive than Steve remembered. He cut a regal figure with the forest as a backdrop, the wind ruffling his mane. Next to him, Jane was definitely pregnant, her belly low and swollen. Thor tipped his head down and lipped at her ear as Steve approached.

“Your highness.”

Thor blinked at him, watching him with liquid equine eyes. “Captain,” he returned after a terrifyingly long pause. “What brings you out?” His voice was slow and thick with some unknowable accent, each word deliberate as if he had to think very hard to translate his meaning into a little-known second language.

Steve noticed the wariness in the prince and held out a hand like he would for any horse. Tears choked his throat as Thor ducked his head and pushed his soft nose into Steve’s palm, blowing out a gust of hot, sweet breath. He flipped his head and shifted his weight, nudging his bulk into Steve’s side. Steve held back the surge of black despair and scratched behind Thor’s ear.

“How was the winter, my friend?” Steve asked quietly, keeping his voice smooth and even, trying to bury any sense of anxiety that Thor might pick up on in the curious way of horses.

“Long, but it closes,” Thor answered slowly. He turned his head to look down at Jane, standing against him with a certain wary skittishness. “There will be a foal soon.”

Steve brought up a smile and held his hand out to Jane, keeping Thor in between them. She investigated his hand, but didn’t push into it, instead backing slowly away. Steve didn’t try to pursue her, instead rubbing his hand hard down Thor’s flank.

“I might be able to find a curry comb,” Steve offered after a second to get himself under control. Thor’s ears perked up, rotating to the front. He tossed his head in happy anticipation, so Steve backed away from him and crossed the paddock back to the stable.

He got all the way to the groom’s station before the breath just left him, and he collapsed hard to a bale of hay, sucking in deep gasps around the constriction in his throat, trying hard to stay quiet, not to break into the wracking sobs his chest wanted so badly. His hands and legs trembled, and he felt sick to his stomach, overwhelmed with guilt and panic. He’d failed so miserably in this – Thor was his friend, his liege lord, his duty, and he’d left Thor alone for more than a month, snowed in with horses and cows. While Steve spent the winter chasing Bucky, dancing, painting, Thor forgot that he was a man, learned to speak and think the way a horse does, let the curse sink its claws even deeper into his flesh. Steve covered his mouth with one hand and pressed the other to his stomach, feeling the ridges of his muscles as they quivered. What was the good of being so big and so strong if he failed the very reason he was created?

He couldn’t breathe. His chest collapsed down, his lungs seized, and he scrabbled uselessly at his throat, fighting for every thin gasp of air, and _Gods_ , he was having an asthma attack, the first since Erskine’s potion, ruining the body that the potion made strong, failing there too, so useless, proving that he was the wrong man for the potion all along.

An impatient whinny startled Steve back to himself, and he caught his first breath in what felt like an eternity. He sucked in a dozen unsteady gasps, arching back to open up his chest, counting slowly backward from ten until he could breathe normally, putting a damper on the panicked thoughts running rampant behind his eyes. Once he had the oxygen to think with again, he realized that it hadn’t been an asthma attack – couldn’t have been one – he’d just panicked like a scared child. Steve swallowed hard, angry and ashamed, wiped at the corners of his mouth, and scrubbed his arm over his eyes. He found a cat up on the groom’s table, watching him with a typical cryptic gaze, flipping his puffy orange tail.

“Going to turn me in?” he asked, his voice cracking, thick with tears. His mouth was slick and tasted of salt.

The cat said nothing. He twitched one notched ear, gave Steve a look that could have been disgust, or could have been simple feline disinterest, and jumped down. The cat sauntered off, and Steve finally pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed a curry comb off the table and returned to the yard. Thor pawed at the ground and tossed his mane impatiently while he waited. Steve set the brush to Thor’s side and dragged it across his ribs and down his back in one strong stroke. Thor leaned into him so hard that Steve was surprised they didn’t both go over. By the time he finished with Thor, the youngest horse had sidled up to him for a turn, and he spent the rest of the afternoon talking with the prince, grooming the herd. It may have been hopeful thinking, but he thought Thor’s speech seemed a little smoother by the time he left.

~*~

Steve meant to go straight back out to the stables in the morning, but Bucky cut him off from the door and herded him back to the ballroom. He had appeared for dinner the night before and Steve explained the situation with Thor. They didn’t talk about the press of their bodies together, the chilled stone sucking heat out of water, Bucky twisting and writhing under Steve’s bulk, Steve’s teeth in Bucky’s neck. They didn’t talk about dancing, or beauty, or love. Steve couldn’t help stack those memories against the certain knowledge of his failure with Thor and felt nothing but shame.

“I should really get back to the stables,” Steve tried once they were in the ballroom. The gramophone was absent from the floor, the ballroom looking no different than it had on dozens of other mornings when they sparred and played.

“It’s not your fault,” Bucky said firmly. He kept himself between Steve and the door, so that when Steve tried to brush past him, it was the matter of shifting his weight to block his escape. “It’s not your fault,” he said again, setting a hand on Steve’s chest and pushing him back.

Jaw clenched, Steve took several steps away from Bucky, afraid he would lash out at his friend if he didn’t. He paced the ballroom restlessly, keeping his eyes on Bucky for the slightest indication of inattention. He considered just climbing out a window, but they’d only been able to get one of them to open, and Bucky would be on him well before he reached it.

“Let me go,” Steve ordered finally, stopping in the middle of the room.

“No.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “Let. Me go.”

“No. Going out there angry won’t help him.” He crossed his arms over his chest, chin up, hips thrust out belligerently.

With a frustrated snarl, Steve ripped his shirt off and threw it off to the side. “This is what you want then? Fine.”

He felt keyed up, wound tight, his skin compressing down on him until he thought he might just pop, explode into one of Bruce’s angry infernos, or just fly apart like shattered china. Bucky settled himself into a low crouch, but he approached almost casually, just forcing Steve further from the door. Steve waited for him to leap, lash out with his metal arm, make one of those deep predator sounds that made Steve’s hair stand on end. They circled like they were dancing, weaving around the ballroom with a steady distance of several feet between them. Growing impatient, Steve jammed his heel down on the next step back and used the leverage to reverse his direction, aiming a fist at Bucky’s right side. Bucky collapsed that arm down, catching Steve’s fist on his bicep and replying with a lightning fast open-handed slap to the face. Steve didn’t duck fast enough and took Bucky’s metal hand full across his cheek. His vision jumped and he rolled with the blow, using the momentum to get clear of Bucky’s next attack.

Steve usually let Bucky begin their engagements, circled endlessly, always watching, analyzing, admiring Bucky’s liquid grace, watching for that move when he shifted from animal to man. Bucky expected it of him, so Steve didn’t even pause to consider his next attack, he just spun wide with his best barroom-haymaker. Bucky jumped back, eyes going wide. He flipped once, landed on his left hand and quickly threw himself back into the air as Steve rushed him. Bucky landed in a crouch, rolled sideways to avoid a kick, and sprung back at Steve. Ready for him, Steve braced his feet and leaned into him so Bucky didn’t take him to the floor where Bucky was the stronger fighter. Wrapping his hands in Bucky’s belt, Steve lifted him straight off the floor, flipping him upside-down. Bucky got his hands down in time to catch himself, braced with one hand and spun on the floor, taking Steve’s feet out from beneath him.

Scrambling to get away, Steve crab walked back several feet, but not fast enough. Bucky caught his ankle and pulled hard, ending up straddling Steve’s hips. Steve arched up, but Bucky was solid and had a good position, his chest pressed into Steve’s, arms wound around Steve’s chest like steel chains. Steve struggled to breathe around the grip, remembered the attack in the stables and forced his body to go limp, his breath to slow. Bucky didn’t let him up, but the tension seeped out of his shoulders bit-by-bit.

“I failed,” Steve confessed into Bucky’s hair.

“This might come as a surprise,” Bucky said, “But not everything that goes wrong is your fault.” He turned his face into Steve’s neck and bit at the large tendon, sucking on it hard, bringing up a bright pinprick of pain. Steve put his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, arched up into him, and submitted to cleansing heat of his touch.

~*~

“And then they started biting each other,” the teacup explained, one of only three that could speak, “And then Mr. Coulson made us leave.”

Natasha considered the report carefully. “Repeat again what the master said to Captain Rogers,” she instructed, splashing tea into one cup. Next to her on his knitted potholder, the tea kettle poured a careful measure of water into another cup.

“You might be surprised,” the cup said, voice bubbling up through the water, “But not everything is your fault.”

“Are you sure?” Natasha asked, “That’s not what you said the last time.”

“Are you seriously teaching the teacups to spy?” Tony interrupted. “They’re children, Nat, for shame!”

“Listening and remembering what people say is an important skill,” Natasha instructed, ignoring Tony entirely. The teakettle clicked his spout in agreement and hustled a cup over to the sink where a scrub brush and a bottle of liquid soap were waiting for teacup bath time.

Tony snorted in amusement and opened the tap to flood the sink with hot water. “You could have just asked,” he said.

“Then you would have bitched about being distracted from your toy.” Natasha opened her spigot to pour hot water into the last cup, nudging it over to the tea kettle, who was supervising bath time.

“It’s not a toy,” Tony sniffed, “It’s a weather globe that I am reasonably sure belonged, at some point, to my father. And your superspycups lessons are interrupting my working time.”

She jumped from the counter to the table, settling in next to Phil and Clint. “You don’t have hands, Stark. Even if you did figure out how the globe got here and could use it to open a portal, there is no one here with both hands and magic enough to actually accomplish that.

Tony’s voice turned flight, void of emotion in that way she knew meant she’d hit a soft spot. “I hadn’t realized that, thanks for your observation.”

He fell quiet, his pipes rattling softly overhead, water moving through them in a soft hiss that Natasha found intensely satisfying. She wondered vaguely what it would be like to have so much water at her command, and stopped herself from asking. Instead, she nudged Phil.

“So the master is done with his crisis for the moment?”

Phil sighed. “Hard to say, maybe. They’re comfortable touching each other, but that’s not new. I don’t think there’s much hope for sex breaking the curse. It was a long shot anyway – Loki’s too complicated for that.”

“I don’t know,” Clint put in, “Steve told me they haven’t ‘gotten that far’- his words, not mine. There might still be a chance.”

“Sex is sex, Clint,” Natasha said, “Whether there’s penetration involved or not. I think Phil’s right.”

Clint made an annoyed noise and draped his arms over her shoulders. He rested his head on top of her lid. It was uncomfortable, being held that way, neither of their bodies flexible enough to really manage it, but Natasha didn’t say anything. She’d existed in a world where physical touch was a weapon before Clint and Phil came along, and then they got her used to be touched just to be touched. It was maybe the cruelest aspect of the curse that it was taken away from her again.

“Have you thought about an electrokinetic blood ritual, Tony?” Bruce asked unexpectedly from his corner. He was quiet so much of the time that it was harder and harder to think of him as _Bruce_ , and she caught herself mostly thinking of him as ‘the stove.’

Tony, who spent months cajoling, threatening, and irritating Bruce into talking with increasingly fewer results, perked up, his attention focusing in on his friend. “We would have to convince Rogers to do it up on the roof in the middle of a thunderstorm,” Tony responded, his voice smooth as if he was trying not to let on how excited he was to hear Bruce’s voice, “And the naturally occurring water factor might be a problem with the chalk.”

“There’s a room on the upper floor that has a partially collapsed wall,” Phil mused, “Would that work?”

After a beat of silence, Tony snarled, “Why am I _just now_ learning about this? You didn’t think that maybe that was something I might want to know?”

“We’re not sorcerers, Tony,” Clint said hotly, “We don’t know what’s important to you.”

“I’m not a sorcerer either!” Tony snapped back, “Do you ever pay attention to a single thing I say? I’ve been talking about lightning ever since Rogers brought the goddamned globe down!”

“No,” Natasha interrupted, “You’ve been complaining about being stuck down in the kitchen whenever there’s an electrical storm.” She turned to the cups, lining up on the counter to wait their turn with the drying towel, “See, children, it’s important to listen and remember what people say.”

The cups chimed an affirmative, three small voices replying, “Yes, Miss Natasha,” in unison.

“Bruce, still with me, buddy?”

“I’m here.”

“What would Captain Fabulously Nonmagical need to complete this ritual if we could get the room wired for a storm?”

“Why do you keep complaining that he doesn’t have any magic?” Bruce asked curiously. His voice was not as slow and sluggish as it had been before Steve and the master started holding their evening story time routine in the kitchen, but he still sounded more of creaking hinges and flickering fire than he did like a person.

“The man doesn’t even register on the magic tests. It’s one of the reasons he was chosen for Erskine’s experiment. They needed someone without any inherent magic, so it wouldn’t react with dad’s ritual. This is well known, Bruce,” Tony added anxiously.

“Tony,” Bruce answered slowly, this time giving the impression of patience rather than difficulty with language, “He was pumped full of a magical potion and subjected to six hours of magical radiation. He may not have anything he can tap, but—”

“It’s swimming in his blood,” Tony finished, awed. His grate slid slowly open and he quickly slammed it shut again, resettling himself. “So if we can get the circles drawn in that upstairs room, rig the room to conduct electricity, all he has to do is go up there during the next storm, and bleed on the ritual to activate it, gods, Bruce, you’re a genius, please don’t leave me again, I need you.”

“I’ll try,” Bruce promised, but he sounded tired.

It really was bed time for the cups, and she had just gotten them all washed up, but she knew from the sound of Tony’s voice that he was being overloaded with inspiration. If she left him without an outlet, he might take a page out of Bruce’s book and explode into frustrated fire, or bust the pipes again.

Clicking her hands on her sides to get her teacups’ attention, she ordered, “All of you find your chalk, and behave or it’s right back into the cupboard.”

Chattering in sudden excitement, they scrambled away from the towel, nearly knocked the tea kettle off the counter, and crowded around the drawer with the chalk. The rug moved out of the way, scrub brushes hurried over to clean the previous night’s writing practice off the floor, and Tony sent half of the teacups over to Bruce to work on part of the spell.

“This will work,” Tony said in a voice that sounded like he was reassuring himself more than anyone.

Natasha shuffled closer to Phil and reached up to put one hand on Clint’s arm, hopeful for the first time in months that she might be able to touch them again soon.

~*~

Steve stood in the pantry, staring down at a bag of apples. His stomach clenched and his hands started to shake. Releasing a quick, angry breath, Steve grabbed an empty burlap sack and filled it with apples and carrots. He grabbed a wooden box of sugar cubes off the top shelf, and then stuffed several sausages, a round of cheese wrapped in cloth, two loaves of bread, and a bottle of cider into a calico bag.

“Ready?” he asked as he left the pantry. He forced his voice to be steady, dragged a smile across his face. Bucky pushed away from the wall and stepped carefully around the intricate drawings quickly eating up the kitchen floor. The teacups were asleep in their cupboard, but Tony was giving out orders to the brushes to remove some of the sketches, while Bruce patiently instructed various other household staff on gathering ingredients for him.

“Don’t go too far, Rogers,” Tony called as Steve and Bucky reached the kitchen door. “I’m going to need to you tonight.”

“We’ll be back before nightfall,” Steve promised. He closed the door firmly behind him and handed off the bag of apples and carrots. A snowfall the night before had softened the perfect edges of his corridor, but it was still easily visible. They walked in silence to the stables. Steve felt better, calmer, after the morning spent in the ballroom, the pain of the sparring session, the blinding heat of Bucky’s body against his. He couldn’t stop that nagging voice that muttered _failure_ on a loop, but he could do something about it, _was_ doing something about it, and Bucky was there at his side.

Steve found them thick leather aprons with pockets at the groom’s station, left their lunch on the table, and stuffed curry combs into their pockets. Thor greeted them at the gate with a happy nicker, trotting up to the fence. He nosed at Bucky’s bag, his attention slowly bringing the rest of the herd over. Jane sidled up to Bucky and nosed at his pockets, ignoring the bag.

“What have you here?” Thor asked, huffing in excitement.

Before Steve could say a word one way or the other, Bucky reached into his pocket and pulled out a disc of stripped peppermint candy. He held it out it out for Jane. She lipped it off his palm and made a happy noise. The youngest filly nudged Bucky between the shoulders for his attention and Steve hastily saved the bag before it ended up on the ground while Bucky passed out peppermint candies to the excited horses. Steve stood back and watched, conflicting feelings of amusement, affection, and worry warring in his chest. He had no idea where Bucky found the candies, but it filled it with hope and warmth to see it – Bucky had been around horses his entire life, and Steve was overjoyed that he apparently remembered this small thing. As pleased as he was for Bucky, it felt like being punched to see the proud Prince Thor happily begging for treats. Eventually, Thor left the crowd around Bucky and stepped up next to Steve, shifting his weight to lean a massive shoulder against Steve’s side. Steve offered him an apple, but he didn’t take it immediately.

“You are worried.”

“Yes,” Steve admitted. “I let you down, leaving you out here alone. I should have found a way to bring the whole herd into the castle.”

“This is good,” Thor said. He tossed his head to indicate his new family, eyes intelligent and warm with love. “This is okay. I am happy here, with them.”

Steve could think of no reply. He offered the apple up again and Thor took it out of his hand with surprising delicacy, crunching down on the crisp red skin, sending specks of sweet juice everywhere. Steve pet his neck, tossed the bag out of reach of the curious horses, and took out his curry comb.

~*~

Tony stopped him at the kitchen door the next morning with an annoyed, “Where are you going?”

Steve turned back around. “Back out to the stables. Where else?”

“No, you’re sitting your ass down and drawing out these circles,” Tony corrected, indicating the chair facing him. The floor was a chaotic mess of geometric designs with only a thin pathway kept clear to prevent anyone stepping on them as they moved around the kitchen. Steve looked down at them, glaring. He’d already spent the previous night with half the staff cleaning up the ruined second floor room, sweeping out snow and debris that had fallen in during the winter, and creating a temporary patch for the hole to keep the wind out. He’d spent the entire morning drawing the room from every possible angle, writing down exact dimensions and noting down imperfections in the floor and wall for Tony’s benefit. The sun was already past the midpoint, and he was itching to get back out to the stables.

“Thor is—”

“A horse,” Tony interrupted, “He’s a horse, and he’s just going to keep becoming more of a horse unless you _get us out of here_. The more time you spend out there petting him like a horse, feeding him apples like a horse, and walking him around like a horse, he’s just going to become _more of a horse_. Send Silver Man out there, he can take care of it. You sit down, and get to work.”

Steve felt flushed with anger, feverish with it, his temper automatically boiling up to the surface. Before he could open his mouth to shout something he would probably regret, Buck’s metal hand landed on his shoulder. Steve took a slow breath.

“Stay,” Bucky said, “I can handle an afternoon on my own. I’ll talk with Thor.”

Staring at the door, Steve didn’t immediately respond. Bucky’s hand tightened on Steve’s shoulder and he gently reeled him in so their foreheads touched.

“You’re not responsible for fixing every problem, and I can’t draw. Stay. Tony needs you.”

Steve let his breath out and nodded reluctantly. Bucky pulled away from him, but Steve caught him by the hips and yanked him back in, slanting his mouth over Bucky’s. He tasted like citrus and maple syrup, warm and comfortably sweet.

“Oh, nice,” Tony commented, “Just go ahead and show off for those of us without hands and mouths. Thanks.”

Steve pulled back, and Bucky brushed his nose over Steve’s cheek once before picking up his bag and forging outside. Steve turned and contemplated Tony for a moment – he was teasing, but also sounded genuinely annoyed. Steve felt a little guilty over the display, knowing that Tony _couldn_ _’t_ reach out and touch someone if he wanted, and how hard that must be for the man famed for his revolving bedroom door.

Deciding not to comment on it, Steve instead retrieved his sketchbook and pencil, and sat down. Tony seemed to struggle with himself for a minute, the sense of him growing uncomfortable as if there was something he wanted to say, but he had no way to say it. He finally settled down with an exhausted sound and said, “Start with that one there. Make sure you don’t cross any lines, and all the spaces need to be even. It’s important.”

~*~

The dark was never something that frightened Clint. Okay, maybe when he was five. Or that time Barney locked him up in the shed overnight. But, in general, Clint was at home in the dark. He hunted like a nocturnal predator, liked small spaces with clear sightlines, and knew how to make the dark fold around him like a lover.

At least, he had until the day he woke up and couldn’t bend his knees or separate his legs. He’d felt colder than he ever had in his life (including that time Barney locked him up in the shed overnight), and the world was cast in a bronze hue, distorted weirdly around the edges. On the plus side, he could somehow actually see around himself in a full three-hundred and sixty degrees. On the downside, something about the dark made his skin crawl. His metal crawl. His patina— whatever. He didn’t like the dark anymore.

Hopping up the stairs and into the main corridor to find it pitch black made him freeze. The curtains were all drawn, the sconces sitting empty and dark, the shadows so thick on the floor that they looked like liquid, like black water, like stepping into a puddle and disappearing forever.

“Stupid,” he muttered, half to himself and half to the curtain ties that apparently decided to stop doing their jobs. He lit his top candle and held his arms high to light his hand candles. The light didn’t do much to illuminate the hallway, but it cast a gentle circle of warmth around his feet and that made it better.

Even if he’d been burning his candles twice as hard, be probably wouldn’t have seen the rope trap before he hopped right into it. The noose tightened in a flash, caught him around his ankles, and dragged him forward. He hit his head on the carpet, his lights went out, and the next thing he knew, he was dangling upside down with the giggle of a flock of feather dusters retreating into the darkness.

~*~

Beast sat at the kitchen table with his feet on the chair, and a saddle on the table. The bristle brushes were going crazy trying to scrub off all the chalk, and the teacups were scrawling flowers on Tony’s side while he was distracted with his muttering. Bucky lay down a neat line of stiches around the broken seam of the saddle, hands working fast and sure, even more proof that he’d once worked with horses in some fashion. The leather was cracked and stretched, but another few hours with a cloth and the saddle soap would at least see it useable.

The kitchen door popped open and Steve strode in looking like a thundercloud. “Can you please talk to the feather dust—” Steve stopped and stared at the saddle. “What is that?”

“It’s a rosebush,” Beast answered immediately, and then paused, not sure why he’d made that comment. Of course it wasn’t a rosebush, and Steve knew it was a saddle, but the word just jumped off his tongue without giving him the chance to think about it.

“Is it a person? Are you fixing them?” Steve asked carefully.

Beast glanced up at him, knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Thor asked for it.”

Steve’s lips tightened and his expression turned to granite. “You are _not_ putting a saddle on the crown prince of Asgard,” he said, low and throaty.

“He asked for it,” Beast repeated. “You wind Coulson’s gears and polish Clint when he gets rusty. Why is a saddle any different?”

Steve stared at him for several seconds longer, breathing slowly and evenly. He let his breath out and shook his head. “It’s not.” Steve scratched a hand across his forehead and crossed the kitchen to sit at the table, neatly dodging the brushes scrubbing determinedly at the floor.

“Can you please talk to the feather dusters? This war between them and Clint is getting out of hand. I found him hanging upside down from the ceiling. He’s going to light them on fire next time he sees them, and they don’t listen to me.”

Beast shrugged. “They started it. They shouldn’t have baited him.”

A simmering quiet settled over them. Beast was aware of Steve’s rising temper, but he wasn’t sure what the man was angry about, or how to fix it. He finished sewing up the broken seam and tied the waxed thread off, pinching the excess string away with two metal fingers. He still wasn’t convinced that the saddle would even fit Thor with as massive as he was, but he was willing to try if it made Thor feel better.

“These are people. Do you realize that?” Steve asked finally, and the sound of his voice reminded Beast of the feeling of a growl building in his chest. “If Clint lights one of the dusters on fire, she will burn up, and die, and we can’t just replace her, she will be _dead_ , do you understand that?”

Beast glared. “They are _mine_ ,” he snarled, “Every one of you is _mine_ , my responsibility, my pack. I understand.”

“Then why aren’t you worried about this?” Steve exploded, startling the entire kitchen. “Why have you let it get so far out of hand? Clint was _upside down_ , he could barely keep his candles lit, and he was dripping wax everywhere!”

“Is he alive?”

“I probably would have started with that if he wasn’t!” Steve snapped.

“Then he’s fine. The dusters knew when they left him that he would be getting back at them.”  Beast tamped down on the indignant snarl rattling against his ribs, tried to make himself speak the words instead of relying on simpler ways to make his point for him. “They can’t be protected from the consequences of their actions.”

Jumping out of his chair, Steve started to pace with scrub brushes dodging quickly out of his way and trying to clean around his feet. He hooked his fingers in his belt like he couldn’t trust himself to have his hands free. “So you’re fine with Clint killing them?”

“He won’t. He’s smarter than that, has better control. But I bet they won’t ever hang him upside-down again.” 

“Clint isn’t doing anything,” Coulson broke in from the doorway. He marched in with Clint behind him.

Clint had his yellow cozy draped over an arm and he stopped at Steve’s feet, reached out and nudged one candle cup against Steve’s pant leg. “I don’t have thumbs, so can you put this on me?” he asked, and if he wasn’t as boisterously cheerful as he usually was, he didn’t sound like he was about to burst into tears, or catch anything on fire either. Steve gave him a long look, and then bent over and picked him up. He lay Clint down gently on his back next to the saddle and worked the knitted cozy over his feet, tying it around his shoulders.

Clint levered himself back upright. “Thanks.” He hopped across the table to the saddle, holding his candles low over it. “This looks like shit. You are going to have one sore ass if you actually try to sit in it.”

“Are all the dusters still alive?” Beast asked, narrowing his eyes. Clint’s cozy was starting to stretch out at the top from going over his base so many times. Beast would have to make a new one.

“No idea,” Clint answered cheerfully. “Ask Nat.”

Steve didn’t say a word, just turned around and stalked out of the kitchen. 

~*~

They could hear the shouting all the way from the stairs, and it sent a chill down Clint’s back, making his candles rattle in their cups. Next to him, Phil cussed. Phil didn’t use swearwords often, and it shocked Clint enough that he barely registered what the clattering and screaming could mean when Steve and the master had been arguing off and on for the last two days, snapping over the smallest things, leaving each other bleeding after sparring sessions, and going their separate ways for the day.

“The master is going to kill him,” Phil said harshly, hopping back onto the steps. Natasha and Clint scrambled after him, though they probably wouldn’t be much good if Steve and the master were going after each other for real. They’d already made their rounds of the upper floor, checking that everyone was put away and no windows were left open; the feather dusters were nowhere to be seen and Natasha still wouldn’t tell Clint what she’d done to them, but she made him promise not to light any of them on fire. Clint hadn’t even realized that Steve had left the ruined room – he hadn’t been at dinner, or in the kitchen for story time.

More agile than both Phil and Natasha, Clint quickly pulled ahead of them, bounding up the stairs and hopping down the hallway to the master’s room. He couldn’t hear anything breaking anymore, but the screaming was louder, Steve’s voice, he thought, with the master’s deeper growl coming through at irregular intervals. He heard Phil and Natasha both shouting for him to stop, but Clint ignored them and hopped up the short stair case to the master’s door. He may not be able to physically do anything to separate them, but maybe just by looking small and pathetic they would stop trying to murder each other.

Clint ran into the door full-tilt, the steadily climbing pitch of Steve’s voice driving him forward. He froze in the doorway and felt his candles flair and sputter, setting of sparks. Steve was on his knees with his chest and face pressed into the carpet, red and misted with sweat, eyes clenched shut, mouth open. The master held his hands down, their fingers twinned together, and drove him into him like a wild thing. Steve shoved back no less wildly, every breath coming out a keening noise, screaming (as if it were possible) _harder_ , and apparently it _was_ possible. Clint’s arms went slack and the door swung shut, knocking him onto his back on the landing, his candles guttering out.

Voice dry, Phil asked, “So are they killing each other?”

Better than any answer Clint could have come up with, Steve shouted, “Yes, gods, yes – there. Ple—!” His voice cut off with a sharp gasp and they fell quiet but for the violent sounds of flesh on flesh.

Clint weakly lifted his head off the carpet and Natasha smacked the top of his candle. “Idiot,” she said affectionately.

Phil nudged him off the floor and they beat a hasty retreat, sending curious household staff back to their rooms on the way. Clint settled himself into his normal position behind Phil, pressed against Natasha’s side, and for the first time since waking up as a candelabra, felt real desire, a ripple of heat over his body, a frustrating sense of tension that he had no way to relieve. He draped one arm over Natasha’s shoulder and set the opposite candle cup on Phil’s handle. It took a long time to get to sleep.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

“These lines have to be exactly twenty-three inches apart, and they serve as grounds for the electricity when lightning strikes the wire,” Tony explained, indicating the carefully replicated corridor of circles with thick borders separating them by, apparently, twenty-three inches.

“Tony,” Steve tried, rubbing at his eyes. He was seated with his back to Tony’s warmth, the sketchbook open on his lap, “I don’t need to know what everything does, I just need to be able to redraw it.”

“I know you’ve never actually been trained with magic, but did you seriously just say that after I’ve spent the last five days teaching you this _abominably_ complex alchemical ritual?” Tony sputtered, water hissing in his tank. “Did you think I was just—what?—wasting my time explaining every single circle, line, and dot to you for _fun_?”

Steve slouched in the chair and tipped his head back against the curve of Tony’s side. “You never told me there was any reason I had to know it.”

“Tell me you haven’t been spacing off for the last five days,” Tony begged, “Just tell me that, I don’t even care if it’s true at this point.”

“I have an eidetic memory, Tony,” Steve reminded him, “I remember everything you’ve said to me since the potion.”

“Oh.” Tony was quiet for a second, and then said, “You do need to understand this. This isn’t just drawing a bunch of lines on the floor and splattering some blood on it, and there you go – otherwise anyone could do it. It has to be done with intent, understanding. You have to know, believe down in the pit of your gut, that when you draw that squiggly little line it is not just a squiggly line, it is a conduit for electricity. If you think of it as a squiggly line, that’s all it will be, and when lightning hits the copper wire on the roof, it will just release into the room and leaving a smoking crater in the middle of it.”

Steve looked back down at his drawings, dozens of symbols and shapes, with a newfound respect. He started reviewing everything Tony told him about every line and what it did – a magical circuit board, he called it, and nothing that any other sorcerer would do, but Tony wasn’t any other sorcerer. He wasn’t, or so he claimed, a sorcerer at all. He was a scientist. This was science.

“I heard you made up with the bossman last night,” Tony commented casually as Steve sat reviewing the symbols.

Steve felt his neck go warmer still. He shifted on the seat, the vague discomfort making him twitch with arousal. “I guess you could say that.”

“I hope it was as fantastic as I’m imagining it was. If it wasn’t, don’t tell me, you’ll completely ruin my day.”

Chuckling, Steve leaned back again, rolling his head to look up Tony. “I understand we were making a lot of noise,” he pointed out, “Probably a safe bet that it was better than you’re imagining it was.”

“Oh, that makes me so happy, you have no idea.” He made a humming noise, and then his voice turned sly as he added, “You _do_ realize that I can feel it when you turn on the taps, right? I can hear through pipes too.”

Heat flushed up Steve’s body from somewhere in the region of his navel, making his face go instantly warm. “Sorry?”

“No apologies necessary,” Tony said cheerfully, “Feel free to have sex in the bathtub all you want.”

Steve should have been horribly embarrassed, but he couldn’t make himself feel anything other than smug remembering the evening before, and happy to know that —as strangely exhibitionist as it seemed— Tony enjoyed it too. He wasn’t sure how Bucky would respond to it though, so decided to keep the information to himself.

“How’re you doing over there, Bruce? Still kicking?” Tony called across the kitchen.

“As I still don’t have feet, I’m probably not kicking,” Bruce answered, sounding annoyed. Tony did prod him with questions about every ten minutes just to make sure he was still conscious, but Steve didn’t feel the least inclination to suggest he stop. Even if it meant Bruce catching on fire, it was better to have him annoyed than silent.

“Don’t be such a spoilsport. How’s the potion coming along?”

“Should be ready by this evening as long as there are no further mishaps with the ammonia.”

“I don’t know,” Tony said, “The ammonia mishap was kinda fun in an ow-burning sort of way.”

Steve left them to their chatter, gathered up his chalk, and headed back for the ruined second floor room. He met Bucky at the top of the stairs and they both stopped with a stair in between them, the space between their bodies alive with electricity. Bucky stepped down heavily into Steve’s space, reached out and put a hand on his cheek. Steve leaned into him, glanced back to make sure they were alone, and stepped one foot in between Bucky’s on the carpeted stair and stepped up. They ended up pressed snuggly together from knee to hip, Steve’s additional inch of height bringing him to rest comfortably over Bucky’s thigh.

“Where are you going?” he asked casually, as if he couldn’t feel the thump of Bucky’s pulse where their chests met.

Bucky put some thought into it, his hands resting easily on Steve’s hips, cupping the space that had been – briefly- bruised darkly in the shape of his fingers. “Outside,” he said finally, clearing his throat. He leaned forward and nuzzled his mouth along the side of Steve’s neck, reaching up to squeeze the back of his neck. Steve considered pulling back just to make Bucky chase him, but he curled his spine instead and set his forehead on Bucky’s shoulder. The tension washed out of Bucky’s back, leaving him wonderfully pliant. Steve turned his head and kissed just below his ear.

“Have fun,” he said, pulling back and stepping away.

Bucky swayed on the stair, confused, and then glared at him. “No, you don’t get away that easy.” He reached down and captured Steve’s wrist, yanking him up the last stair and into the first room in the west wing.

~*~

Late into the evening, Steve lay contended on the floor of Beast’s washroom. The tile felt deliciously cool in the warm air, Steve a comfortable presence beneath him. Beast adjusted his position, tucking his shoulder more firmly beneath Steve’s and molding himself to Steve’s side. They were quiet, their breaths coming in an easy rhythm, pulses slowly returning to normal. Steve tucked one forearm behind his head and trailed the fingers of the opposite hand down Beast’s spine. Craning his neck, Steve looked down at Beast.

“It doesn’t seem as red and inflamed,” he commented nonsensically.

“Do you want it to be red and inflamed?” Beast asked, the laugh lodging in his chest and making his ribs shake. Steve smacked him lightly on the shoulder, but he laughed too.

“I meant your skin, where it meets the metal.”

Beast rolled up to a sitting position and looked down at himself. The metal’s advance had slowed over the last weeks, but there wasn’t much further for it to go before it completely consumed him in the first place. He prodded at his chest where it was still smooth skin, felt along his collarbone, craned to look down his back.

“Doesn’t hurt as much as it used to either,” Beast concluded. He held his arms out and frowned down at them. The silver covered his right shoulder and extended down his arm in an uneven slice, but the hand was still completely untouched.

“What does it feel like?” Steve asked softly after a beat of silence.

Beast glanced down at him, considering the question. “Like being gnawed at by a swarm of fire ants,” he answered finally, the best description he could come up with. “In the beginning it was like being burned alive, but it’s not so bad now.” He let his hands fall into his lap.

Steve shifted onto his side and set gentle fingers on Beast’s metal arm. “Can you feel everything through it, like skin?”

“It’s not like skin,” Beast said, shaking his head, “I can feel through it, but it’s like wearing a glove all the time.” He rolled one shoulder, not sure how else to explain it, not sure he was comfortable explaining it at all. Steve’s fingers kept running up and down his arm, tracing the valleys and hills that mimicked the lines of his muscles. It wasn’t as intense as when Steve touched his skin, but it felt good in a different way, sending ripples of warmth and electric shocks over his body. Steve opened his mouth to answer another question, but Beast cut him off by the simple expediency of sealing their lips together.

Beast didn’t back away until all the tension drained out of Steve’s neck. He pulled away, leaned back in to kiss his cheek, and then rolled up to his feet and walked out of the room. He could hear Steve’s soft sigh, a sound of disappointment, and hesitated by the bed.

Steve came out a moment later with his shirt on, carrying his pants in one hand. He leaned against the doorframe and looked Beast over with that scalding gaze that made Beast feel at once hunted and powerful. “I’ve almost finished the set up for Tony’s ritual,” he said casually, “Maybe tomorrow I can join you out in the yard again.” He cleared his throat. “How is saddle training going?”

“Good. The saddle doesn’t fit Thor, but Darcy is taking to it okay.”

“Darcy?”

“The youngest one. She’s never carried a saddle before and she bucks a lot with it on, but she seems to like it once she gets used to it. Clint promised Thor he would help me build a bigger saddle this summer.”

Steve went still, the way he always did when any of them talked about future plans as though they might be in castle beyond the spring thaw. Beast didn’t think it was practical or safe to spend the days waiting to leave. They did in the beginning – Beast threw a blanket on Thor’s back and they would try to leave every day. Somewhere past the stream, they would get confused, forget where they were going and why, and always end up back at the castle. Beast wanted his companions to be free of the curse, but he wasn’t going to refuse to make a life for them just because it wasn’t the life they wanted.

“That’s great,” Steve said finally, swallowing back whatever argument he might have had. He stepped up to Beast and set a soft kiss on his mouth, another on his jaw. “I’ll see you for breakfast.” He moved back, shifting to put his pants on.

 Beast caught his wrist, hesitated. Straightening his shoulders, he said, “Stay.”

~*~

With fifty riders and a hundred horses, the trip that could take a single horse and rider a day of slogging in the snow had taken them five. They were camped in the woods not far from their best guess for the castle. Pepper huddled into her furs with Rhodey’s broad chest in front of her and Sam’s pressed against her back. The wind kicked up a fuss outside the tiny tent, blowing snow and freezing air through the seams. Beneath the furs, it was stiflingly warm, but outside the furs was bitterly cold.

“I swear, I’m going to kill Tony when we find him,” she promised, squirming around to turn over. The two men went still while she rearranged herself. They’d spent four nights in the same pallet, but the first hour of the arrangement was always the same – the two of them avoiding her eyes, shifting uncertainly, delaying getting under the covers until Pepper had installed herself in the middle of the pallet and dressed down underneath the warm furs. She chose to dress and undress beneath the furs because it was _cold_ , not out of any sense of modesty, but neither of them would so much as take off their breastplates until she was settled.

“You know,” Pepper said conversationally, “If it were just the two of you out here, I bet you’d be cuddled up together like kittens.”

“It’s different,” Rhodey said, but he made a gruff noise and wrapped an arm around her ribs to drag her into his chest. Pepper relaxed against him and reached out to take Sam’s hand. He shifted closer, his arm ending up draped over her and curled around Rhodey’s back.

“Great, now that _that_ _’s_ settled,” Pepper praised, opening a fold in the blanket to let in some fresh air. She’d lived in the city all of her life, and the only time she had been out of the city was in the summer to visit her great aunt’s farm. The snow piled up around the walls of Asgard, but it was situated in a low valley, protected by the mountains on three sides and the ocean on the fourth. It was never as bitterly cold, and she’d never seen snow so deep in her life – rain she could handle any day of the week, but feet of snow was beyond her. None of the soldiers seemed concerned about cuddling up to share body heat, but Pepper was the only civilian on the expedition, and that apparently exiled her from the warrior’s club.

“Do you think Tony’s okay?” she asked after several moments of silence.

“I think if it’s even remotely possible for Tony Stark to _be_ okay, he is. Steve’s probably the only man I’ve ever met who’s more stubborn than he is. Since they’re there together, we’ll either find that they’ve killed each other, or taken over a small country.” Sam’s shoulders shifted as a shrugged. “The second option seems more likely with Prince Thor and Coulson between them.”

Pepper nodded. They were camped in the forest just south of the stream Sam remembered crossing, the last thing that he was entirely sure of before his memory got hazy. Loki, Queen Frigga, and three court sorcerers would be Working through the night and probably into the next day to dismantle the shield that caused Sam’s memory loss and protected the castle from scrying. Pepper prayed that Tony just waltzed out of the castle on his own at that point, healthy and whole, and complaining about being taken out of his solitude when he was getting so much work done, but the twisting in her gut made it seem unlikely. Tony may have turned away from magic in favor of science, but he was still one of the best sorcerers of their generation. If there was any way for him to walk out of the castle and break the shield on his own, he would have. The warriors were all bound up for a fight, tempers were running hot and tending toward revenge. It gave her a nasty nervous feeling every time she witnessed an outburst of violence or temper.

Outside, the sky opened up and it began to rain.

~*~

Beast woke feeling strange. He blinked up at the canopy, puzzling at what made him feel so strange. His feet tingled, and the muscles in his legs jumped restlessly, his skin felt tight between the metal, and the silver seemed _alive_ , alternately twisting and squeezing him. A hand fell to his chest, and he tensed for an attack, pulse skyrocketing, eyes flying wide. The sight of Steve’s worried face made him relax, but it didn’t make him feel better.

“Are you alright?” Steve asked, frowning down at him. Beast didn’t realize until Steve’s hand started rubbing in slow circles that he was growling, so deep and low that it was barely even a noise, just a shudder against his ribcage.

“Something is wrong.” Beast threw back the blankets and pushed Steve off of him so he could stand. He retrieved a pair of loose pants, but nothing else as he left the room at a jog. The castle was suspiciously quiet, a strange tension in the air, a sense of unnatural stillness. As he passed a window, he realized that it was rain. Lightning flashed across the sky, briefly lighting the hall up, casting everything in flat white light and deep shadows. Steve came up behind him, dressed in his pants and Beast’s shirt, barefoot on the carpet.

“I better go get ready for the ritual,” Steve said. He cupped one hand briefly around Beast’s shoulder and kissed his temple. “If it actually opens a portal, I should be back with Howard in minutes, but if not…” he trailed off, frowning unhappily.

“Go,” Beast said simply, pushing him away.

Steve nodded, but came back and caught him in a fierce kiss. “I love you,” he said, voice harsh. He didn’t expect Beast to say anything in return, and didn’t wait for him to decide if he wanted to, instead turning and running for his own room where his shield and gear were stored.

Beast stalked the halls slowly, still feeling off and unable to blame it on the storm. Something was _pulling_ at him, making him restless and achy. He found the kitchen lit up, Bruce holding all of his pots and pans on his stovetop, Natasha hustling the teacups into the cupboard, the room hot and smelling of moisture and metal.

“We were just about to wake you, sir,” Coulson reported, jumping down from the table and urging him back into the hallway, Clint following at his heels.

Letting them lead, Beast followed the pair out of the kitchen and down to the stairs that lead to the cell, out of hearing range of the various children in the kitchen.

“The castle is under attack,” Coulson reported succinctly. “Thor rode to the door to warn us. He’s getting his herd out of the stables and bringing them into the entryway, in case the enemy decides to burn them down. We’ll need you to open the front doors. Pick us up.”

Beast didn’t hesitate so much as moment to ask questions. He grabbed Coulson in one hand and Clint in the other, and took off running for the entryway. Once there, he set them back down and lifted the heavy beam they’d use to bar the front door after the snowdrifts pushed it in the first time. He could hear the clop of hooves on the stone porch, the whimper of dogs, the caw of a crow. He shouted with the strain as he lifted the beam alone, and just managed to turn enough not to drop it on Clint and Coulson.

As soon as Beast had the door open, Jane eased in, moving slowly and obviously in some distress. Darcy came in after her, and then the others all in order from youngest to oldest. The cats rode on the backs of horses and cows, all three dogs carried kittens in their mouths, and several of the adult cats did as well. Crows swooped in through the open door, finding perches on the banister and in the eaves. Thor and Eric brought up the rear, and Beast peered out the door into the darkness. A flash of light showed him what he didn’t realize he’d feared – men. A lot of them, moving in the trees with weapons and torches. Thor helped him push the door shut, and Bucky managed to get the beam back in place after a lot of snarling and swearing, dropping it twice. He twisted all the bolts to give the door as much reinforcement as possible, and then turned around. They all stood around him, staring, waiting.

“Wake the household,” Beast ordered. “Anything you can find to defend yourselves, bring it out. Clint, find those feather dusters, call a truce, and make these intruders regret finding our home.”

Clint snapped off a smart salute and ran for the stairs while Coulson turned back for the kitchen. Thor cleared himself a space in the middle of the floor and reared onto his hind legs, making a great racket of high-pitched alarm calls that echoed through the entire castle, his hooves striking the stone like hammer blows. The sound hurt his ears, but Beast grinned fiercely in approval. Beast leant his own voice to the call, dragging a great roar out of his chest, the sound drowning out even Thor’s shouts. All around them, the castle came to life, even pieces of furniture that had been still for months rousing to the call. Indeed, he felt the very stones themselves responding to him, shuddering to obey.

Beast set one hand on the stone wall, feeling it for the first time as a living thing, willing and able to defend itself and those who lived within. High on the ramparts, stone gargoyles shifted in readiness. The clatter of Steve’s footsteps dragged his attention away and he turned to see Steve running down the stairs in the blue and red leathers he appeared in that first day, carrying a shield at his side, his face grim and set.

“The ritual?” Beast asked.

“I’ve set it up, activated it. If it works, a portal will open in Howard’s lab. If he’s there, he’ll come through. If he’s not, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. What is this about the castle being under attack?”

“Men in the woods with blades and torches,” Beast explained, his lips lifting away from his teeth. “The shield surrounding this place is breaking. They will come soon.”

“Do you know who they are?” Steve asked anxiously, rushing over to the door and opening the small viewing window.

“Enemies.”

“It could be Asgard,” Steve argued, “They might be here to rescue us.” He turned hastily, hope and anxiety sharing space on his face. “We have to talk to them.”

“They look as men prepared for war,” Thor said, voice strong and deep, clear in the darkness of the entryway hall. “Still, should it be my brother and his host, we may yet avoid bloodshed.” He stamped a foot on the stones. “I will meet them on the field and treat with them, discover their intent. Unbar the door.”

Bucky bared his teeth. “No. They will see you and think only that you are a horse.”

“If my brother—”

“If your brother is the one who put this curse on us, he would know we were not being held captive and he would not be here armed for a fight,” Beast snapped, getting in between Thor and the door. “Take Jane and the young ones to the storage room beneath the stairs. It is the most secure in the castle.”

Thor tossed his head in irritation, prancing on the stones, eyes rolling back. Jane made a soft noise beside him, touching her nose to the bottom side of his chin. He calmed slowly, snorted and wheeled to lead his pregnant dame, Darcy, and the cows to the interior room. The cats and dogs followed with their kittens, and Steve reluctantly chased after them to get the door open.

The castle became a buzz of activity with Clint, Coulson, and Natasha running point on making the castle difficult and treacherous to navigate, arming the furniture that could move, and setting up defenses and traps.

Beast ran through the rooms on the lower floors, blocking the windows where he could, and the doors where he couldn’t. They were unprepared for the attack with no defenses outside the castle save for the gargoyles, and too many of the rooms were fitted with wide windows and no bolts on the outside of the door. They would have to just fortify the entryway and make the rest of the castle treacherous enough that it was costly for them to come in through the windows.

Steve found him as he returned to the entryway, dodging around giant bookcases shuffling out of the library and standing in the halls to serve as barricades. “You have to let me talk to them.”

“They are invaders, attacking my home, threatening my pack. We will not talk!” Beast roared.

“Our home,” Steve corrected softly, “Our home, our family. If it is Asgard, they will recognize me, they will speak to me, and all of this will be over before it even begins. If it is not, then at least we know the warriors we’re fighting are actually the enemy.”

“If they are not your friends, they will kill you. I won’t allow it,” Beast said in a low growl. He tried to turn away, but Steve caught him by both arms. Beast jerked against his hold, but Steve’s grip was tight and he was all tension and determination.

“I know you want to protect me. You’ve protected me our entire lives, and I love you for it, I owe you more than you could ever know for it. But now I can also protect you, and I need you to let me do it. If I can save lives, you have to let me do it.” He pushed his face into Beast’s neck, nipping at the delicate skin under his jaw, his body giving off mixed messages – he was leaning over Beast, holding him captive, strong, but Steve’s mouth against his jaw was a sweet submission.

“You’re going to do it no matter what I say,” Beast said, realizing that Steve’s mouth on him was an apology and not acquiescence.

Steve kissed him, grip relaxing. He nodded. “I’d rather have you behind me, but I’ll do it even if you’re not.”

It made him feel helpless, looking up at Steve and knowing it might be the last time he saw him alive, knowing that Beast was needed in the castle and he couldn’t go out with him to leave the others alone. It also made him warm with pride, the certain knowledge that Steve _could_ handle himself. He grunted, spun, and grabbed a fur lined cloak from a nearby coatrack. He swirled it around Steve’s shoulders and pulled the hood up.

“Just don’t do anything stupid until I get there,” he said, huffing out an unhappy breath.

Steve smiled and kissed him again, hot and wet, filled with promise and need. He pulled back and winked. “How could I? I’m leaving all the stupid here with you.”

~*~

On the approach, the castle seemed abandoned. They should have been more cautious, but the silence, the darkness, the cover of rain made them careless. Loki cursed as he saw movement in a flash of lightning, animals being led inside in the castle. The castle’s caretakers obviously knew that they were no longer alone in their valley. If they hadn’t alerted the castle to their approach, they could have waited for the storm to break, but with the castle quickly fortifying and arming, every moment they delayed would make breaking the barricades and freeing his brother that much more difficult.

“Hel and damnation,”Loki cursed heatedly under his breath. “Ready the ballista, get the horses to the back of the line!”he ordered, but not loudly. Behind him, Volstagg bellowed his orders back to the troops, wheeling his horse and galloping down the line to get the warriors ready. Fandral and Hogun turned and forged into the mud to do the same, leaving him alone with Lady Sif. She was quiet and still on her horse, her eyes glued to the hulking shape of the castle, flickering over every detail she could glean in each flash of lightning.

Loki glared through the trees, wet, and cold, and despite everything, bitter. He and Thor were inseparable as children, but as they grew and it became readily apparent to all that Thor was the favored son, the court’s attention to turned to him. Despite his famed silver tongue, Loki was not naturally charismatic and he didn’t make friends easily, where Thor could charm a dragon with a smile and one of his booming anecdotes. Loki had burned with jealousy watching Thor come and go with his friends, Lady Sif and the Warriors Three. They were a merry band of mischief-makers costing the realm hundreds of lives over the years in meaningless battles, thousands of gold pieces in ransoms and reparations, and yet the people still loved him and his companions. Loki would have given anything to among their number, to walk at Thor’s side, to feel that he belonged there. And now, he rides out with not only Thor’s loyal boon companions, but those of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers as well.

He did not deny that jealousy was a poison in him, and he could not have stopped the nasty voice that whispered _if you never find Thor and The Avengers, these friends will be your friends. They will accept you as their leader, their prince, you who tried so hard to find your brother, their friends._

Loki shuddered at the thought, horrified with himself. He did love his brother. He just wanted to be worthy of being loved in return.

“The defenses look…paltry at best,”Sif observed from his side. “Do you think there is much by way of magical defense?”

Loki peered through the darkness. It would be hard to tell for sure from so far away, but whoever put together that shield had Power. It would be foolish to believe that the castle itself would be left defenseless when a shield of that strength and magnitude protected the whole valley. Not only was the shield powerful, but it was subtle, insidious. Only someone who was not _looking_ for castle or its inhabitants would be allowed through, and then would only be allowed to leave on the permission of the castle’s master, their memories scrambled by the shield as they left.

“Without getting closer I could not say exactly what is guarding the castle, but there is a master here, and he is powerful.”He cast a glance at Sif’s glaring profile, and then amended, “He or she.”

She nodded stiffly, and turned to see to her own preparations, leaving Loki alone. He sat in silence, exhausted from the grueling work of a full day and two nights picking apart the shield. It healed almost as fast as they unraveled it, and in the end the best sorcerers in the kingdom had only been able to create a hole to let the host through.

His mother approached, her snowy white horse a ghost in the forest’s gloom. “There is power in this place,”she observed softly. “It is old power, the power of titans and blood. Do you feel it too, my son?”

“Oh, yes.”Loki felt the power of the meadow drifting over his skin like a dark promise, plucking at his own magic, calling to him.

“I must make a confession,”his mother said after a moment. She waited until he turned to look at her before continuing, “I had thought that perhaps you were responsible, in some way, for your brother’s disappearance.”

He winced, said nothing, jaw going tight, hands clenching around the reins.

“This castle, the shield, however, it is not your doing. I see that now.”She reached across the space that separated them and squeezed his wrist gently. “Take care, and bring your brother back safely. I will offer what protection I may from here.”

She touched his face with her hand and then turned the horse and forged back through the line of men waiting impatiently for the signal to move. Loki turned in the saddle to watch her. She was a formidable fighter in her own right, and he knew that it pained her to stay behind when both of her sons could be in danger, but she and the other sorcerers had taken the brunt of the work with the shield, saving Loki’s strength until the confrontation, he being the best among them with evocation magic, quick and best suited for fighting.

A crash came from the castle, and Loki looked up to see the door opening. A single cloaked figure emerged mounted on a massive draft horse. The figure ducked to make it through the door mounted, but straightened up as soon as he was through. He was a massive man himself, through dwarfed by the size of his steed. The door slammed closed behind him, and even through the rain, Loki heard a heavy beam falling into place. The man kicked his mount forward into a slow walk, pushing through snow drifts that brushed the horse’s belly as the moved. It would be hard going to get the warriors through the snow, worse with the rain turning the top layers to slush.

Loki watched, waiting to see what the stranger would do. He came to a stop at the meadow’s halfway point, raised one arm, and shouted into the rain. His words were completely lost to a roll of thunder, but a flash of lightning behind him revealed his intent. From the castle’s battlement, a dozen massive shapes lifted into the air on dark wings, ready to attack or defend. 

“That’s the sorcerer!”

Loki spun in his saddle, searching for the speaker, but before he could get a single word out, he heard Volstagg’s booming voice call for the charge. The warriors shouted and lurched forward. Startled, the stranger’s mount reared up, and he held fast to the horse’s mane to keep his seat –bareback, Loki realized. Another flash lit the pair up and Loki’s eyes met the horse’s over the twenty yards that separated them. Loki felt a tug of sympathetic magic, his powers recognizing a thing of his own doing.

“ _NO!_ ”Loki screamed into the darkness, but it was too late, the wind and the rain too loud. None of the warriors heard them, crashing through the snow toward the vulnerable rider and Loki’s brother, not realizing that they aimed to attack their own prince. Loki leapt from the saddle even as the gargoyles launched down at the attacking warriors, breaking the charge and giving the mounted man time to turn and put more distance between him and his assailants. A flashing silver disc launched out of the darkness, knocking back the vanguard and returning the man’s hand, marking him as Captain Steve Rogers.

“What is it?!”

It was that Virginia woman, the bitch. She grabbed his arm even as he yanked his staff out of the saddle holster. “Get back, woman!”he snarled.

She grabbed him again. “TELL ME!”

He shoved her off, making her stumble backwards and land on the ground. “That horse is my brother!”Loki screamed, gathering power and slamming his staff into the soft ground. A shockwave of pure, silver-green will rolled out away from him, turning the snow blinding blue where it passed. “The man on his back is Captain Rogers. Go do something useful, damn you woman!”

She didn’t even bother to hurl an insult back at him, but jumped to her feet and went running, dodging warriors as they ran to join the charge. Loki ignored her and everyone around him. He traced a fast circle with a practiced swirl, empowered it, and sought desperately for the threads of the spell, trying to unwind it before his brother was killed by the very men and women who were there to save him.

~*~

Steve caught his shield and fought desperately to keep his seat on Thor’s back as they struggled through the snow and the press of armed warriors around them. Steve threw his shield again, knocking one man back into the snow, where he disappeared into the drift. They reached the cleared area around the front door and Thor clattered up the stairs.

“These warriors are of Asgard!” Thor shouted over the din of shouting men and whistling wind.

“They must not be able to hear us,” Steve affirmed, watching worriedly as the men closed, struggling through snow that reached up to their shoulders in places. He heard scrabbling at the door and turned to smash a fist into it. “ _DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR!_ ” he shouted. The attackers were too close, and they would never be able to close the door again.

“Perhaps we are betrayed,” Thor said, voice so quiet that Steve wouldn’t have heard it if it weren’t for the wind abruptly dying down.

“Let’s start with ‘misunderstanding’ and go from there!” Steve threw his shield again. To either side of them, pipes exploded with scalding hot water, sending men screaming back and slowing the advance of the others. “Listen to me!” Steve shouted, but he could barely hear himself over the gush of water, the angry patter of the rain, and the wind.

From the forest, a brilliant ring of green and silver light exploded outward, pulsing twice over the snow, lighting up exactly how outnumbered they were. Another blast of hot water barely missed Steve and Thor, and Steve tugged on Thor’s mane to get them closer to the door.

“Captain!” Coulson shouted through the viewing window, “Tony is trying to hold them off so we can open the door, but the master has disappeared, and we can’t lift the beam.”

“Damnitall!” Steve hissed. He peered around the overhang to the balcony above him just in time to see a dark shape launch out into the air. Bucky landed on a warrior in the snow, and bounded away, graceful and dangerous in the darkness, every flash of lightning turning him into an avenging angel of shimmering silver light. Steve urged Thor out after him, reluctantly drawing his blade.

“Hold tightly, Captain!” Thor warned before he gathered himself and leapt off the porch, flying over the heads of the majority of the attacking force. He landed hard and stumbled, plunging them both into a suffocating world of icy death. Steve took in a startled breath of snow and came up coughing when Thor managed to get their heads above the drift. He floundered in the deep snow, exactly the reason Steve hadn’t wanted to go out with him, and they made an easy target for whoever could get there fast enough with a blade. Thor’s churning legs finally caught solid footing and he surged up out of the snow and away from the pit. Fighting in the snow was a mess, and it would have been comical if they didn’t all have killing steel.

More green light gathered in the forest, above them, lightning struck the copper stakes up to call it down, and a great, deafening boom issued from the sky. The rain abruptly cut off, and the field fell momentarily still as combatants struggled to regain equilibrium and hearing. In the silence that followed, a lance of offensive magic shot from the trees – blue-white, briefly highlighting a redhead sorcerer with her staff held high above her head- and Steve watched, horrified and helpless, as it struck Bucky square in the chest, sending him flying.

Steve screamed a frantic denial and fell off Thor’s back reaching for Bucky through the distance that separated them. He struggled up out of the snow, aware of Thor shouting in a voice to shame the heavens, but all Steve could see was Bucky’s dark shape lying still in the snow.

“ _BUCKY!”_

A great ball of green fire shot into the air and exploded over the meadow, leaving a silver glow over the whole of the castle that drenched the snow in white light. Bucky looked very pale in the glare of it, his silver body shimmering and casting back the light.

Steve fell to his knees at Bucky’s side, hands fumbling for the gaping wound in his bare chest, idiot jumping into the snow in nothing but a pair of ragged pants. Bucky stared up at him, his breath even and measured, his eyes wet at the corners. He looked stunned and confused, but not frightened. Pulses of thick, liquid silver rose between Steve’s fingers, trickling over Bucky’s ribs into the snow.

“It’s okay,” Steve said, very conscious of his the way his voice shook. He tried to eliminate the tremor and firm his voice when he continued. “It will heal in a second, it’s fine.”

Bucky didn’t reply, his eyes never leaving Steve’s face. A fine shiver rippled through his body and the shimmering silver covering his neck started to recede in a flicker of green flame, leaving healthy pink flesh behind. Steve watched it fade in horror as the metallic blood under his palms turned red and gushed up, thinner than the silver, hot and nearly black.

“No,” Steve protested, pushing on the wound. “No, not like that.”

“You said my name,” Bucky breathed. His lips were flecked in dark blood, but he smiled. “Bucky. James. I was starting to wonder if I had one at all.”

“That’s right,” Steve said through the tears choking his throat. All around them, the snow slowly turned crimson, steam rising in wisps. “Hi, Bucky.”

“Hi, Steve.” Bucky lifted a hand and set it gently on Steve’s cheek, thumb wiping away the tears there. “You crying, baby?”

The sob nearly choked him. He pressed his face into Bucky’s hand, still fighting the gush of blood between his fingers. “Must be all of your stupid making my eyes water,” he responded, barely able to speak. Beneath him, Bucky’s body spasmed and he coughed, warm blood speckling Steve’s neck and face. “Stop that,” Steve commanded helplessly, “Stop it, just wait. Someone will… we can fix it.”

Bucky’s breath came in a wet gasp and Steve scrambled to adjust his position, pulling Bucky up to rest against his chest, squeezing down hard on the slick wound. Bucky managed two shaky, even breaths, and turned his face up to the sky. He was quiet and Steve jostled him to keep him awake. The silver was almost entirely gone, receding down toward his foot, over his ribs to his left shoulder.

“Stay with me, okay, Buck?”

“I think you’re going to be okay without me,” Bucky said softly. He smiled, and the burning green of his eyes flared briefly, and then flickered out, leaving behind the blue-grey Steve almost didn’t recognize. Down the slope of the hill, another flare of green called Steve’s attention and he watched Thor rise onto his hind legs, a massive shape on the horizon, suddenly consumed in burning green flame. The warriors still surrounding him backed away sharply, and a gust of wind blasted through the meadow, ripping the flames away. In the horse’s place, Thor-the-man stood naked, tall and proud, his blond hair long enough to touch his belt, whipping out in the wind. Across the field, Steve saw more green flames, felt the power of the place shift.

“There,” Steve said, shaking Bucky to get his attention. “There, see it’s okay now. Just hold on, we’re going to fix this.”

Bucky’s eyes tracked slowly over the field. He drew in a shuddery breath. “We already did. I’m glad.”

“Don’t you dare. Don’t.” Steve scooped up handfuls of bloody snow and shoved them against Bucky’s chest, holding tight, trying to slow the bleeding.

“You’re not the boss of me, Rogers,” Bucky said faintly, “But I love you anyway.”

The tension drained slowly out of his body, green flame licking at his toes, guttering out. He fell limp, pale and pink everywhere but for the glint of magelight off his silver arm. Steve shook him, watching helplessly as the silver stopped pulling away from his flesh. The flames didn’t come back.

The shriek that tore out of his chest could have woken the dead, but Bucky lay still and silent in his arms.

~*~

It began as a tingle in his feet. Bruce stirred, craning his consciousness to look down at the floor, but there was nothing, just his heavy iron feet on the stone. The tingle intensified and Bruce panicked, recognizing the sensation and an impending change, and _no_ , no when he got angry he caught on fire, he didn’t turn into that raging green beast anymore. Bruce shouted in denial, scrabbling at his stomach with his hands, sucking in deep breaths, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to calm himself down.

“Well, hello, handsome.” It was a light female voice, one that he didn’t recognize, and yet, he _did_ recognize the sense of her. It was his cast iron pan.

Bruce opened his eyes, and the kitchen looked strange. He was down too low to start with, and he was cold, and he could only see in a thin cone. And there were two naked people on top of him – a woman with curling brown hair, and a leggy man concealed by her body.

“Margaret Carter,” she introduced twisting awkwardly to hold up a hand in an abbreviated wave, “But you can call me Peggy.” She offered her hand and Bruce took it. With his hand. He looked up sharply, sound finally impacting. Across the kitchen, Tony was shouting in triumph, stretching his hands out and examining his fingers, jumping up and down, shamelessly running his hands over his body. At his feet, a boy of about twelve shook his head in baffled confusion, and there were children all over the counters, one of them still in the cupboard. An older woman with steel grey hair sat where the icebox once was, and a mass of puppies spilled out of the cupboard under the sink.

“It’s done,” Bruce muttered numbly. “We broke the spell. How?” He thoughtlessly rested his hands on Peggy’s upturned rear and quickly jerked them back.

“My brilliant ritual spell, of course!” Tony hooted. He was dancing in place, but Bruce noticed that he hadn’t left his position yet.

“Um, Miss Carter, I don’t supposed you could…?” the man underneath Peggy asked, sounding a little strained.

Peggy quickly hurried off Bruce’s lap, kneeling next to them. “Oh, yes, sorry, Mr. Jarvis.”

Mr. Jarvis sat upright slowly, rubbing at his temple with one palm. “Quite alright, Miss Carter.”

Tony stopped dead, eyes wide, and then he tore across the kitchen to kneel Bruce’s side. “Jarvis?” he asked. “You look exactly the same.”

“And you, Master Tony, assuredly do not. Please do put some clothes on, it’s not polite to run about in your skin.”

Tony launched over Bruce’s lap to wrap his arms around Jarvis’ neck. He squeezed tightly for a long minute, and then backed up, grinning. “Look who’s talking.”

Jarvis looked down at himself, and then cast a glance at Bruce and Peggy. “Oh, dear.”

Even through the castle walls, they heard Steve’s anguished scream echoing off the stones. The very castle seemed to go silent in the wake of it.


	10. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Steve sat on the floor with Thor’s sleeping son cuddled against his chest. In the bed, Jane made a distressed sound, tossing in her sleep. The faint noise summoned Thor from his table to the bedside, and he sat down next to her, gently running a hand over her hair. She quieted, nuzzling against his palm in her sleep.

The after effects of the curse were particularly hard on her, and, three months later, she’d yet to regain the ability to speak, and was easily spooked, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d already drawn out a map of the entire night sky on the ceiling of the room she shared with Thor. Finding her in labor when they got the castle doors back open, they rushed Frigga into the panicked storage room for a grueling thirteen hour labor while Thor paced outside the door. None of them were sure that the child would be born wholly human, but he had ten fingers, ten toes, Thor’s olive skin and blue eyes, and Jane’s dark hair laying thick on his head.

In the wake of the curse dispelling, hundreds of items of furniture ended up staring at the ceiling through human eyes, most of them baffled to no longer be in the positions they expected. Steve still caught several falling back into the patterns they were used to when they weren’t paying attention – standing still with arms crooked up to accept coats and hats, backs braced against a wall and knees bent at ninety degrees, carrying around unlit candles.

Clint seemed like the least affected by the curse, returning very much to his old self within minutes of waking up with toes. If was even more physically affectionate than he had been before the castle, no one was going to call him on it, but Steve felt like he was being punched in the throat every time he saw Clint with the yellow candelabra cozy worn around his wrist.

Tony made Coulson a clock that he kept around his neck, the ticking strong enough for him to feel it against his chest, and Natasha had all but adopted the half dozen cups that turned out to be actual children when they realized their parents were a hundred years in the grave. Clint’s arch nemesis, the feather duster, was not a young lady at all, but one thirteen year-old Wade Wilson, one of the few who changed back wearing clothing in the form of a puffy orange dress. He rarely left Clint’s side unless it was to terrorize Peter Parker, Tony’s new apprentice. Despite Tony arguing for his ritual spell unexpectedly breaking the curse and Loki’s work during the battle, they still weren't sure exactly what shattered the enchantment around the castle, but Steve ultimately wasn't as concerned with the mystery as he was with having his team back where they belonged. The rest would come later.

The infant against his shoulder stirred, drew in a shaky little breath, and started to cry. Thor reached down and scooped him up in one giant hand, lifting him easily out of Steve’s arms.

“You’re going to have to name him eventually,” Steve said softly.

“My lady’s health improves daily,” Thor answered, cuddling the child against his neck and rocking smoothly. “When she feels comfortable with speech once more, we shall name him together.”

Steve said nothing. They sat in silence for several moments. Thor was often quiet and contemplative since returning home. He moved with a deeper understanding of his own body and the space he occupied, listened with a keen ear, and was slower to speak. There were still moments though, in the boisterous grand hall with his friends around him, that the giant smile he was known for would return, and Steve thought he was going to be just fine.

A series of three cheerful knocks at the door interrupted the silence. Thor moved away from the bed so he wouldn’t disturb Jane and opened the door rather than call for the person to enter.

“Are you two ready yet?” Darcy demanded, quieting her voice when she noticed the sleeping infant. A sweet smile lit across her face and she held her hands out, twitching her fingers. Thor handed his son over without a moment’s hesitation, an honor he bestowed on very few, and almost none outside of his herd and The Avengers. “Come on, even Stark is ready, and that man can primp like nobody’s business,” Darcy continued in a whisper, rocking her body smoothly side-to-side.

“The fault is mine,” Thor explained, taking his cloak off the wall. “It is I who held the Captain up. Stay with Lady Jane and the child, if you would, Darcy.”

“Duh,” Darcy responded, crossing the room to the bed where Jane lay tiny and pale beneath the blankets.

Steve levered himself up off the floor and straightened his uniform. They met Tony and Coulson in the anteroom. Tony scribbled in a notepad, barely acknowledging them, preoccupied with own worries as he fell into step at Steve’s left. They caught up with Natasha hauling an unhappy Bruce behind her by the sleeve in the hall.

“Stop worrying,” Tony ordered, seeing him, “You hadn’t had an episode since six months _before_ we were all turned into household objects, you’ll be fine.”

“I still shouldn’t be in high stress situations,” Bruce argued, but he didn’t press the issue, just straightened his suit and fell into step at Tony’s side.

Steve trailed the back of the group, watching them move together. The winter they spent at the castle was in many ways a blur of uncertainty and terror, but they came out of it a closer team, each other them growing in their own way. They moved like clockwork when they were in a group, forming and reforming depending on the situation without thought, arranging behind Steve on maneuvers, shifting to put Coulson in front when dealing with the public, moving behind Thor as they entered the palace or throne room. They did so now, Clint and Natasha separating so Thor could step between them, Coulson and Tony moving subtly to put Bruce in the very center of the group, leaving Steve as a rear guard.

The audience hall was packed with nobles and spectators, the king seated on his throne in his full regalia. At the foot of the stairs, Loki stood stiffly with his hands behind his back, shackled and gagged. He looked defiant and angry, but to Steve he also looked resigned. Thor pulled away from the group and they stopped in the middle of the corridor, Natasha and Clint once again closing ranks to provide Bruce a buffer from the outside world.

Loki turned as his brother approached. Thor reached out and put a supportive hand on his shoulder. Loki inclined his head, and Thor let him go, climbing the stairs to kneel at his father’s feet.

“You look to be in good health, Father,” Thor greeted. His voice was quiet, but it carried over the echoing silence as clearly as if he’d shouted. “Thank you for agreeing to this audience.”

Steve settled him for Thor’s long argument to release his brother from the sentence Odin slapped on him the moment it was known that he was initially responsible for the curse. To Steve’s left, Tony was tense and unhappy, but feelings in the group ran the gamut from disinterested to annoyed. Loki did cast the initial spell that nearly cost them their lives, but Thor contended that he wasn’t ultimately responsible for the castle – had they remained in town like Loki intended, he would have removed the curse after a few days. Steve wasn’t sure that he agreed on Loki’s good intentions, but he was willing to support his teammate, and Loki _had_ nearly killed himself trying to remove the curse during the battle. They still didn’t know exactly who _was_ responsible for the castle, and the mystery consumed most of Tony’s time, starting with the scorched lightning mark in Howard’s lab.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Steve saw Tony shift and put a hand idly to his chest. The curse left them all with little souvenirs, though not all of them were visible. Tony walked away from the castle with a ring of enchanted metal in his chest that glowed with the fire of the boiler. He tapped at it when he was nervous or irritated. Steve reached out and touched his elbow. He looked down, realized what he was doing, and dropped his hand.

“I will consider all that you have said, my son,” King Odin proclaimed after a lengthy monologue from Thor, “As well as the support of your team, and the testimonies of the Lady Sif, Miss Virginia Potts, Colonel James Rhodes, and Lieutenant Sam Wilson.” He glanced over at the court records keeper, tapping away on a typewriter. When she nodded, he continued, “For now, let Prince Loki Odinson be returned to his quarters under the care of Lady Sif. I will deliver my decision on the morrow. Dismissed.”

Sif’s hand on Loki’s arm was tight, but she glared hotly at the first guard who tried to step forward to help her. Tony turned on his heel and walked quickly out of the room, gathering Pepper and Rhodey with him as he went, Loki obviously dismissed from his thoughts now that he’d put in an appearance for Thor’s sake. Steve watched his team disperse, and waited for Sam to break away from his post to discuss the summer training schedule.

~*~

Steve was exhausted when he finally returned to his own quarters, a generous set of rooms in the palace’s east wing that were simultaneously more room than he needed, and far too small after having the whole of the meadow castle to roam.  He heard a crash from the interior bedroom as he closed the hall door and hurried through the sitting room.

Steve stopped in the doorway and crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doing?”

Bucky, struggling to get out of the bed, growled, “What does it look like?”

“You have a _hole_ in your chest, Bucky.”

“No,” Bucky corrected, “I _had_ hole in my chest three months ago.” He reached out with his silver hand and grabbed the bedpost, pulling on it. He managed to get to his feet, but a wince rippled across his face and fell back to mattress, putting his right hand to his chest. “I am not staying in this bed one more minute,” he said harshly once he had his breath back.

Steve rolled his eyes and grabbed the wheel chair from where Bucky had pushed it away. He set it firmly by the bed and gestured to it. Bucky glared at him.

“Do you want me to pick you up?” Steve offered.

Making a low noise that sounded a lot more like Beast than Bucky, he hauled himself back out of the bed and dropped into the wheel chair. Steve put his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned down to kiss him, slowly, taking his time to explore Bucky’s mouth.

“You’re going to get tired of pushing me around eventually,” Bucky muttered when they separated, but his face was flushed a soft pink.

“I never get tired of pushing you around,” Steve answered, pulling him away from the bed and stepping behind him to take the handles. Bucky could push himself, and most days he could make it from the bed to the sitting room on his own, but he tired quickly. He’d decided to wheel himself out to the practice yard earlier and spend the day with the Commandos. Steve found him asleep in the chair when he went out to get him for the audience, and decided to put him to bed rather than wake him.

Steve pushed him to the table and brought him a carafe of fruit juice and a plate of cold cuts and bread. Bucky was silent in his chair, staring down at the food with his lips turned into a frown.

“Hey,” Steve said softly, getting his attention. He smiled, “You _died_ in my arms three months ago. I don’t care if you’re in that chair for the rest of our lives, I am never going to stop thanking the fates that you’re here. But,” Steve added, “You’re not going to be in the chair for the rest of your life. The queen said maybe another week before you’ll be up with a cane, and Bruce is already hard at work making you potions to cut that in half. It’s going to be alright.”

Bucky groaned. “You’re so optimistic it actually hurts, Rogers, seriously, you’re a sap.” But he looked lighter as he constructed a sandwich and bit into it.

When Steve stood and walked past him, Bucky reached up and grabbed his sleeve. Not looking at him, he said, “Love you, punk.”

“Love you too, jerk.”

Bucky’s fingers slid off his sleeve, trailing down his wrist, and briefly hooked in his fingers before letting him go. Steve stopped at the door to look back at him, never able to walk away from him without remembering rocking his body in the snow, screaming until he had no voice, and the miracle of Bruce stumbling out of the castle, naked, healing energy already gathering around his hands.

“Stop staring at me like I’m gonna disappear,” Bucky told him, twisting to glare at him. “You’re never getting rid of me now.”

Steve snorted. “Like you’d survive a day without me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final line editing was a little rushed, so I will be coming back in over the next few days to fix typos, etc. 
> 
> Have unanswered questions? Stay tuned for the next episode of....
> 
> For teasers, updates, etc., come visit me on tumblr: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/


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